@Robert Gentel,
Well, thank you...some sense amongst all this.
There's certainly a loony fringe around all this here, too, but I have had the sense that this has affected the laws in the US more.
As I said, here the law is firmly weighted against victims, so much so that our government is investigating it to see if there is any way to change the weighting without abusing the "innocent until proven guilty" and "guilty beyond reasonable doubt" thing.
Frankly, I doubt there is much to be done. This is an area where there are almost never witnesses, where forensics (which of course, in real life, does NOT resemble the capacities of fantasy shows like CSI, though our legal people are beginning to talk of a "CSI effect" affecting the chances of conviction even more, as juries expect magical forensic proof which is totally unrealistic), where children are witnesses and easily intimidated or confused...and where trial, IF it occurs, generally occurs years after the alleged offences.
Younger children are deliberately interviewed using protocols which research strongly suggests will NOT result in disclosures of actual abuse, rather than ever leading children to make false diclosures. This is to ensure any evidence arising from these interviews is demonstrably unled by the interviewer.
Really, there is almost always going to be reasonable doubt, unless an offender really hurts a child, or leaves a lot of forensic evidence, like semen, saliva etc AND the child discloses within the forensic gathering timeframe, which is much shorter than the general public imagines.
Truly, it's amazing that there ever IS a conviction....unless the accused is an actively predatory paedophile with many victims, AND the prosecution manage to have all the victim's cases heard in one trial (often there are multiple separate trials, and the jury are never allowed to know there is more than one accusation...ditto with multiple rapists...although better DNA testing is having results there, as adults tend, if they are going to report, to do so more frequently within the critical period for gathering key evidence)
And, really, while the horror of it all for kids makes one want to scream sometimes, I haven't heard professionals in the field wanting to water down accused's rights. Not at all. Though there are loonies around who ought to know better, in academe, for instance.
The moral panic stuff you cite looks crazy....I would think it ought to be easy enough to make such laws saner? Though legislating in the middle of a moral panic is tough, I have no doubt.
Your point about going too far is good. I have noticed, for instance, some absolutely crazy stuff being reported from the US re kids with sexualized behaviour, and how they are treated....but I always doubt news stories on such matters.
I wish someone who knew something about the child protection system was here. For instance, some of the cutting edge research about kids' memory, about interviewing techniques that are scrupulously fair and so on comes from the states.
I discount Rydinearth's claims as hyperbole....but I sometimes see examples of techniques apparently used in the US that would be thrown out of court here.
I know that, as here, every state is different (though our states do get together a lot on this)....but are there really state services using methods that most would consider unsound? (It's a given that people will always complain about whatever a child protection service does, by the way: it's always too harsh and destroys lives, or it's too weak and allows children to be abused.....I am wondering if there is anyone with good knowledge.)
Another example...do US child protection authorities really have the resources to harass people, even if they wanted to?
Here, even priority one cases, which are where kids are seen to be in critical danger, are often not acted on. Because there's nobody to do it.
Meanwhile, the whole area of trying to protect kids where there is reasonable reason to believe someone presents a threat to them, but the thing will never get to criminal court....oy veh!!!
Also, systems are always run by people...and where there's people, there's error.
I think the real problems here occurred early in the whole revelation about child sexual abuse thing.
In my state, initially the service dealing with adult rape was made to interview children...the techniques used at that time would be seen as totally unacceptable now...not because the people using them were evil and malign...they did the best they knew how to do at the time, but because research and skill to interview kids fairly was in its infancy.
Robert, if you wanted to talk about what "this effort" that you refer to is, I'd be interested.....
