The rant, continued
Mar. 6th, 2002 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sierciaOkay, I should have finished this last night, but work interfered. (More on that later).
I happened across this story while randomly surfing yesterday. To save your friends pages, I'm going rant about it over here.
Now, I'm not going to argue that sexual abuse of children is a horrifying thing. It is. I'm not going to discuss issues around false allegations, repressed/recovered memories, and manipulation of family court by bitter spouses. That's for another time and place.
Essentially, legislators are trying to pass a new law, holding employers responsible for the actions of their employees, should they abuse a child while acting within that capacity of their jobs. This is, of course, in reaction to revelations that Cardinal Law knowingly re-assigned priests accused of sexual molestation to new parishes, where they would continue to come into contact with children, thereby putting the kids at risk.
DISCLAIMER: Now, I haven't read the actual bill being considered. I also don't know all the laws currently in place. I'm taking most of my info from this report. That being said, the following bits of the article have me steamed.
The bill targets any employer who "recklessly hires, retains or supervises an employee whom the employer knows or should know will interact with children and poses a probable risk of harm to a child."
"It's criminal for an adult to knowingly allow another adult under their employ to sexually abuse or physically abuse a child," said the bill's sponsor, Sen. Marian Walsh, D-Boston. "It's never OK to be quiet or look the other way."
So, are we to expect employers to be prescient, and be able to predict the actions of their employees? Particularly when, under current laws, former employers are strictly limited as to what they are allowed to say about former employees? Yes, I think employers SHOULD do background checks of prospective employees, but even those aren't foolproof. How do they prove they didn't know an employee was a risk? It's that "should know" that gets me. And how do you assess a probable risk? And for the second paragraph, it seems to me that they're comparing apples and oranges. What Ms. Walsh says is true. If an employer knows an employee is abusing children within the context of his job, he should be forced to report it. Same as teachers are (in theory) required to report suspicions of abuse. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me... but that also doesn't seem like this is what the bill is calling for.
The church's reluctance to report priests suspected of child abuse to law enforcement shows why the Legislature should adopt the bill, Murphy said.
"What the church has done screams out for this law, because they clearly weren't deterred by the current law," she said.
We were just discussing this today... if what was done violates a law already on the books, which her statement seems to imply (they wouldn't be deterred by a law that didn't apply to them, it seems to me), then they should be prosecuted under THAT law. Deterrence isn't the only reason for laws to be on the books. They exist to provide for the ability to punish people who are not deterred by the threat of the law as well. We don't need stricter or more all-encompassing laws. We need the laws that exist to be enforced. If there's actually no law in place (see my earlier disclaimer on knowledge of the law) to require employers to take legal action on actual reports/allegations of sexual abuse by their employees, then I might well agree that there should be. But to require that employers "should know" if their employees are a "probable risk"? That seems a whole other can of worms, and a road we don't want to walk down, for the reasons stated above.
Even Murphy acknowledged the difficulty facing employers under the bill, but said that even if some employees are falsely suspected, it would be worth it to protect children.
"Some good apples will be thrown out with the bad apples," she said.
This pushes so many buttons for me, I'm not even sure where to start. I guess with the idea that she seems completely content to turn innocent until proven guilty on its head. That's a basic tenet of our legal system. And while, yes, sometimes it does suck to see someone who seems obviously guilty walk away from a crime because of it, I'd still rather have that than the reverse. Just because a crime is particularly repugnant does NOT, in my book, mean that it's okay to reverse the rules of law in an effort to ferret out everyone suspected or accused of the crime.
The other thing about this that make me so angry is two-fold, but they're related. The first part is the increasingly deadening of society for "the safety of the children". This has always pissed me off, and parents have frequently said to me "You'll understand when you're a parent". Well, I AM a parent now, and it's STILL stupid! Yes, I want my child to grow up safe. Yes, I want her to be happy and well adjusted, and to not have to deal with adult issues before she's ready. But I don't want to live in a world with no adult pleasures (or vices) because some people couldn't supervise their children well enough. I don't want a world that's safe for a two year old to run through unsupervised and not get hurt. That's why two year olds have parents.
The second part is the increasing trend towards "no acceptable risk" parenting and child-rearing. In all, this is a rant for another post as well, but I will say this. We can't keep our children 100% safe in this world. We can't. If for no other reason than children are foolish, and will do stupid, risk-filled things the second we turn our backs. Or the reason that accidents happen. Or that there ARE people in the world who hurt children for whatever reasons they may have. We can't stop it all, and we're foolish to try. We're even more foolish if we cast an ever widening net of blame trying to hold someone else responsible for what happens to ourselves, and our children.
I happened across this story while randomly surfing yesterday. To save your friends pages, I'm going rant about it over here.
Now, I'm not going to argue that sexual abuse of children is a horrifying thing. It is. I'm not going to discuss issues around false allegations, repressed/recovered memories, and manipulation of family court by bitter spouses. That's for another time and place.
Essentially, legislators are trying to pass a new law, holding employers responsible for the actions of their employees, should they abuse a child while acting within that capacity of their jobs. This is, of course, in reaction to revelations that Cardinal Law knowingly re-assigned priests accused of sexual molestation to new parishes, where they would continue to come into contact with children, thereby putting the kids at risk.
DISCLAIMER: Now, I haven't read the actual bill being considered. I also don't know all the laws currently in place. I'm taking most of my info from this report. That being said, the following bits of the article have me steamed.
The bill targets any employer who "recklessly hires, retains or supervises an employee whom the employer knows or should know will interact with children and poses a probable risk of harm to a child."
"It's criminal for an adult to knowingly allow another adult under their employ to sexually abuse or physically abuse a child," said the bill's sponsor, Sen. Marian Walsh, D-Boston. "It's never OK to be quiet or look the other way."
So, are we to expect employers to be prescient, and be able to predict the actions of their employees? Particularly when, under current laws, former employers are strictly limited as to what they are allowed to say about former employees? Yes, I think employers SHOULD do background checks of prospective employees, but even those aren't foolproof. How do they prove they didn't know an employee was a risk? It's that "should know" that gets me. And how do you assess a probable risk? And for the second paragraph, it seems to me that they're comparing apples and oranges. What Ms. Walsh says is true. If an employer knows an employee is abusing children within the context of his job, he should be forced to report it. Same as teachers are (in theory) required to report suspicions of abuse. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me... but that also doesn't seem like this is what the bill is calling for.
The church's reluctance to report priests suspected of child abuse to law enforcement shows why the Legislature should adopt the bill, Murphy said.
"What the church has done screams out for this law, because they clearly weren't deterred by the current law," she said.
We were just discussing this today... if what was done violates a law already on the books, which her statement seems to imply (they wouldn't be deterred by a law that didn't apply to them, it seems to me), then they should be prosecuted under THAT law. Deterrence isn't the only reason for laws to be on the books. They exist to provide for the ability to punish people who are not deterred by the threat of the law as well. We don't need stricter or more all-encompassing laws. We need the laws that exist to be enforced. If there's actually no law in place (see my earlier disclaimer on knowledge of the law) to require employers to take legal action on actual reports/allegations of sexual abuse by their employees, then I might well agree that there should be. But to require that employers "should know" if their employees are a "probable risk"? That seems a whole other can of worms, and a road we don't want to walk down, for the reasons stated above.
Even Murphy acknowledged the difficulty facing employers under the bill, but said that even if some employees are falsely suspected, it would be worth it to protect children.
"Some good apples will be thrown out with the bad apples," she said.
This pushes so many buttons for me, I'm not even sure where to start. I guess with the idea that she seems completely content to turn innocent until proven guilty on its head. That's a basic tenet of our legal system. And while, yes, sometimes it does suck to see someone who seems obviously guilty walk away from a crime because of it, I'd still rather have that than the reverse. Just because a crime is particularly repugnant does NOT, in my book, mean that it's okay to reverse the rules of law in an effort to ferret out everyone suspected or accused of the crime.
The other thing about this that make me so angry is two-fold, but they're related. The first part is the increasingly deadening of society for "the safety of the children". This has always pissed me off, and parents have frequently said to me "You'll understand when you're a parent". Well, I AM a parent now, and it's STILL stupid! Yes, I want my child to grow up safe. Yes, I want her to be happy and well adjusted, and to not have to deal with adult issues before she's ready. But I don't want to live in a world with no adult pleasures (or vices) because some people couldn't supervise their children well enough. I don't want a world that's safe for a two year old to run through unsupervised and not get hurt. That's why two year olds have parents.
The second part is the increasing trend towards "no acceptable risk" parenting and child-rearing. In all, this is a rant for another post as well, but I will say this. We can't keep our children 100% safe in this world. We can't. If for no other reason than children are foolish, and will do stupid, risk-filled things the second we turn our backs. Or the reason that accidents happen. Or that there ARE people in the world who hurt children for whatever reasons they may have. We can't stop it all, and we're foolish to try. We're even more foolish if we cast an ever widening net of blame trying to hold someone else responsible for what happens to ourselves, and our children.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2002-03-06 11:19 am (UTC)How can we expect our boss to be responsible for this?
I agree, this is a pretty silly law.
Well
Date: 2002-03-06 03:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2002-03-07 12:46 am (UTC)That may seem like a flippant comment, but I'm dead ernest. Laws like that are seriously a show, put up after a reaction by the broader community to a various issue, to show that the government actually does something once in a while. If it turns out anything like the Australian mandatory sexual abuse reporting laws, it will never get called into play. I do think that the law would be better phrased without the 'should know' bit, because quite frankly, there are enough clergy turning a deliberate blind eye to child sexual abuse committed by their employees, and this should not be allowed to happen.
On the other hand, it's yet another pathetic excuse to try to fix up something with a law that will never get used, rather than actually adressing the issue. And of course, the issue being that people are doing this in the first place, and that society in general is happy to turn a blind eye to such things, unless it hits the paper headlines.