a gross cohabiting couple

This is a prime example of why cohabiting is dangerous for children.
Headline:
3 children found starved in hotel bathroom
Officials say kids were so emaciated they threw up when first fed

If you've got the stomach for it:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32091786/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts
This is a prime example of why cohabiting is dangerous for children.

Dr. J gives the prize for the most misleading headline

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/jul/05/na-child-porns-dirtysecret-dads-often-behind-lens/news-breaking/
“Nearly twice as many children in a nationwide child-porn database were photographed by their parents as were victims of online enticement. The number victimized by parents was nearly seven times that of children exploited by strangers.”

Later in the article, we learn: "What law enforcement tends to be seeing is that the children who are being used to produce these images are kids being abused in bedrooms and basements and living rooms across the United States and elsewhere," said Michelle Collins, executive director of the Exploited Child Division of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The division is a clearinghouse for law enforcement to share information when children depicted in pornography are identified. Collins said this helps prevent defendants from arguing that the children in their pornography collections aren't real.

Since the program started in 2003, more than 2,300 children have been identified in pornographic pictures and videos, Collins said. Of those, 27 percent were photographed by parents or stepparents; 24 percent by neighbors or close family friends; and 10 percent by other relatives.
Just 4 percent were photographed by strangers. The rest were photographed by coaches, babysitters, their parents' boyfriends and girlfriends, or by themselves, often after being enticed by someone they met online.”

Please note the sleight of hand: at the beginning, we hear about “parents.” only at the end of the article, do we learn that “parents” includes stepparents and biological parents. most studies that break this down by step, bio and cohabiting parents, find that bio fathers are MANY times safer than step parents or mothers’ boyfriends. So the 27% were photographed by “parents or stepparents” and the 4% photographed by strangers, is the basis for the statements that “The number victimized by parents was nearly seven times that of children exploited by strangers.” But almost certainly that 27% is dominated by non-biological “parents.”

I looked at the website for National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and could not find the original data on which these statements are based. If anyone else can find it, please post a comment to that effect. This anti-parent screed should be exposed for what it is: an attempt to frighten people into thinking that parents pose the greatest threat to their own children, and that only the state and its bureaucratic allies can be truly trusted to have the child’s best interest at heart.

Child porn websites on the decline - but remain vigilant

Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow -

The Internet Watch Foundation's annual report reflects a decline of nearly 10 percent in the number of international websites with child porn.

That may be because some countries such as Britain are pressuring or forcing the Internet providers to remove them. But Pat Trueman, special counsel to the Alliance Defense Fund, warns that people should not be complacent, even though the reduced figure is welcome news.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=519548

Heading off Facebook, MySpace child predators

Pete Chagnon - OneNewsNow

A new partnership is being launched in the area of Internet security. Focus on the Family is involved in the effort. YouDiligence is a web-based company headquartered in Montpelier, Vermont, and provides parents with a useful monitoring tool for popular social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Company president Kevin Long explains how YouDiligence works.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=506124

The spanking wars: anti group rolls out a meta-analysis

Carolyn Moynihan

The latest shot in the spanking wars has been fired by the US anti-spanking group End Physical Punishment of Children, through a review of existing research on the subject. The national lobby group suggested the idea of the meta-analysis to Elizabeth Gershoff of the University of Michigan (but did not fund the study) and she found that corporal punishment is not a good way to improve a child's behaviour...

However, the Family Research Council points out:Ironically, though, the research did not focus on spanking at all, but on "physical punishment." The study explicitly lumps together words like "spank," "slap," "beat," "punch," and "whip," treating them as if they are all the same thing...

Dr Gershoff, a mother of two, affirms the importance of discipline and suggests parents raise their voice or immediately take something away from the child to get their attention. Hmmm. But what if a toddler throws a tantrum precisely because you took something away from them, and what if they can make more noise than you? Isn't that the time for a short, sharp smack to snap them out of it? That's what 70 per cent of US adults still think, despite the campaign against such correction. ~ Arizona Republic, Mar 19

http://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/the_spanking_wars_anti_group_rolls_out_a_meta_analysis/#comments

Should NY Discriminate Against Sex Abuse Victims?

Maggie Gallagher

Michael O'Herlihy used to be a Catholic priest.
He was accused of abusing one of his students around 1980, at a time when he taught at Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx. In 1993 he was defrocked. In 2002 his name was included on a list of priests accused of sexual abuse that the Archdiocese of New York gave to Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.
And, yet, where is Michael O'Herlihy today?

http://townhall.com/Columnists/MaggieGallagher/2009/04/01/should_ny_discriminate_against_sex_abuse_victims

Is abortion a remedy for abuse of minors?

Carolyn Moynihan

After watching the story of the nine-year-old Brazilian girl pregnant with twins who were aborted unfold for several weeks, the New York Times has run an on-the-spot piece -- the spot being a Sao Paulo women’s health clinic specializing in treating victims of sexual violence. One of the “treatments” offered by the Perola Byington Hospital is abortion, which the doctors there say is often necessary to protect the lives of sexual-violence victims. Of the 47 abortions carried out in the hospital last year, 13 were on girls under 18, all victims of rape.

http://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/is_abortion_a_remedy_for_abuse_of_minors/

Maggie Gallagher on The Texas Polygamy Case

I really like Maggie's article today on the Texas Polygamy Case. I too, have been scratching my head over this case. I am totally against polygamy. I consider our modern advocates of polygamy, whoops, I mean, polyandry, to be completely naive. Group marriage will not evolve into some glorified Marin County, hippie love-fest. It will be an exploitive mess with major social spillovers.
Having said that, there is something deeply troubling about the mass round-up of children from their mothers in this case. If polygamy is a crime, arrest the fathers and put them in jail. Don't separate the kids from their mothers.
That's just my take on it. Read Maggie's here.

The Boyfriend Problem, Update

Evidently, the link to the AP story on what I called the Boyfriend Problem, is no longer active. Here is an msnbc link to the same story.

More on Malachi: A Child Advocate Attorney Speaks

From an attorney who has represented both children and parents in the Child Protective System. He was initially not too happy with me for blaming the attorneys and social workers and the whole "due process" process.

I represented one father about 6 years ago, who was on his way to prison, and whose nine children (yes, nine) were in the child-protective system as a result. He was very bitter and wanted to fight the system. I met with him the night before the court hearing, and I asked him to consider whether fighting for his kids was in the best interest of his children, or whether he just wanted to fight for fighting’s sake. When he paused, I told him that I would meet with him the next morning before court, and if he could look me in the eye and give me one reason why fighting was in the best interest of his children, then I would fight all the way. But if he couldn’t, then I asked him to consider voluntarily relinquishing his parental rights. The next day, he did so.

I believe that attorneys should discuss relinquishing rights with their clients, and should not always assume that fighting is the correct approach. Perhaps that is one small area where the system could improve, through training for those involved. Many of the attorneys in the system are inexperienced or barely competent attorneys who either don’t understand the system, or don’t care about the cases very much. And there is a cultural problem among attorneys, where most assume that you must accept your client’s goals without question in order to fulfill your duty of representation. Law schools and bar associations should encourage attorneys to “counsel” with their clients to help them choose the most appropriate goal, rather than simply accept the client’s goal unhesitatingly.

But aside from better training for the participants in the system (including much needed training for social workers regarding the constitution and the integrity of the family unit), I’m not sure what the solution is on a system-wide level. In Michigan, under reform legislation in the 1990s (that I believe many states adopted), the parent has one year from the date a child was removed to get their act together, before the state will file a petition to terminate parental rights. And where there are serious allegations of abuse, the state may petition to terminate parental rights at the first dispositional hearing (after the court takes jurisdiction). Perhaps in the case you wrote about, given the history of that mother, the state should have sought termination sooner. But the laws already allow for that option in some circumstances. Is there some reform to the system or the legal framework that you are advocating? I am interested in considering any possible solutions (or improvements). I sometimes find these court hearings so depressing that I skip the rest of the day and go home to enjoy my wonderfully intact family and young kids!

I think I agree with you more than I first thought. Your article was strongly worded, and I still think blaming the attorney for the mother (and others) for the murder perpetrated by the foster family is incorrect. Balancing the needs for permanency and protection of children with preserving the integrity of parent-child relationships is very difficult. I’m not ready to say that we should abandon the procedural requirements before terminating parental rights. But I think that your comments about the broader cultural issues (i.e., on adoption) are dead on.

More on Malachi

Here is another comment, similar to the one above:
Over the years many young women have crossed my path who have had children out of wedlock. More often than not, these young women would have their own parents care for the child so that the young woman could go out and party, do the hook-up scene, and "still have a life." Only one actually gave her daughter up for adoption, and I commended her for it. As for the others, whenever I would ask these young women why they did not choose adoption for their children, they'd say, "Because I don't want my baby having another mother." If the women were actually taking responsibility for their children instead of going out every night, I would understand. But this kind of selfishness is a sad commentary on our times.

Who Killed Malachi?

Way back when.... I wrote about the sad case of a child killed in foster care, by his foster mother. His birth mother was 15 when he was born, and had been and still was, in foster care herself. My question was: why was that little boy not placed for adoption right away, so he could have had a chance for a normal life?
I got a lot of mail in my in-box, rather than through this blog. So I am just now getting around to posting it all here.

I must say, I feel somewhat uncomfortable with your comments in "Who Killed Malachi". As a crisis pregnancy counselor, I have to tell you how extremely difficult it is to get our clients to be open to the thought of adoption. Just today I tried and tried to get the point of how adoption would benefit their child to a couple that will most certainly lose their child to CYS and the foster care system once the baby is born. Adoption is not something they will even try to consider. Generally, these are lowly educated people who are not responsible and take no accountability for their actions,- all reasons that helped lead them to the crisis they are facing. They generally rebel against authority and truly believe that their children are better off with them. Your article made it sound like if only someone had encouraged adoption, the mother would have suddenly taken responsbility and accountability as a parent. While I am not at all familiar with this case, I can tell you that biological parents will rarely admit their children are better off elsewhere, much less be responsible enough to actually go through with placing their child for adoption. I went through a lengthy training from the National Adoption Council, yet in my 4 years at a crisis pregnancy center, I have yet to see a client 'do the right thing' by placing her child for adoption.

Thanks to everyone who wrote about this. Sorry it took so long to get this posted. The original article is here.

The Boyfriend Problem

Even the mainstream media is starting to connect the dots between cohabiting boyfriends and child abuse. This AP story reported on yahoo.com includes horrific incidents, as well as interviews with experts like my friend Prof. Brad Wilcox of the University of Virginia sociology department.
The bottom line: the most dangerous person in a child's life, the person most likely to abuse a child, is his mother's cohabiting boyfriend. Not the biological father. The feminists and their political allies have driven biological married fathers out of the home. Feminists have convinced women that marriage is dangerous to them. The opponents of marriage never seem to take responsibility for the fact that the main alternative to marriage, cohabitation, is much more dangerous to women and their children.
Notice this paragraph from the very bottom of the AP story:

Oscar Jimenez Jr., the San Jose, Calif., boy found buried under cement and fertilizer, did have a biological father who was devoted to him. But the father, Oscar Sr., separated from Oscar Jr.'s mother in 2002 and was prevented from seeing his son in the weeks before the boy's death in February, allegedly from a beating by live-in boyfriend and ex-convict Samuel Corona.

I'd be interested to know who prevented the father from seeing his child, and how they prevented him.

Sexual Misconduct, (but not by priests)

The AP did an investigation of sexual misconduct by educators. Guess what? Many, many public schools have sexually abusive teachers. According to one investigator,

From my own experience — this could get me in trouble — I think every single school district in the nation has at least one perpetrator. At least one," says Mary Jo McGrath, a California lawyer who has spent 30 years investigating abuse and misconduct in schools. "It doesn't matter if it's urban or rural or suburban.

Some school districts have histories of of shuffling perpetrators around.

Too often, problem teachers are allowed to leave quietly. That can mean future abuse for another student and another school district.
"They might deal with it internally, suspending the person or having the person move on. So their license is never investigated," says Charol Shakeshaft, a leading expert in teacher sex abuse who heads the educational leadership department at Virginia Commonwealth University.
It's a dynamic so common it has its own nicknames — "passing the trash" or the "mobile molester."
Laws in several states require that even an allegation of sexual misconduct be reported to the state departments that oversee teacher licenses. But there's no consistent enforcement, so such laws are easy to ignore.
School officials fear public embarrassment as much as the perpetrators do, Shakeshaft says. They want to avoid the fallout from going up against a popular teacher. They also don't want to get sued by teachers or victims, and they don't want to face a challenge from a strong union.

I'm glad somebody is finally looking at this. But I have to be a little suspicious about the timing. The Catholic Church has been raked over the coals for the last 5 years, at least. Justifiably. It is good that the Church is being held accountable, and is now holding itself accountable for agressive prevention programs. But why are we only now asking about sexual abuse in public schools?
Some of us in California have been cynical about this subject because the state legislature revoked the statute of limitations, specifically so that civil suits against old clergy abuse cases could go forward. But that law exempted public institutions. People were suspicious that the reason for the exemption is that the state of California did not want to make its own public schools liable for similar claims and similar awards.
That suspicion looks all the more justified now that this AP report is coming out, just as the largest of the CA clergy abuse cases has been settled in San Diego and Los Angeles.
If public school districts shuffled abusive teachers, they should be held accountable every bit as much as the Catholic schools have been.

One report mandated by Congress estimated that as many as 4.5 million students, out of roughly 50 million in American schools, are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade. That figure includes verbal harassment that's sexual in nature.

About 10%? 9%, to be exact. That's alot, though I can't tell how many cases are verbal harrassment.
By contrast:

The findings draw obvious comparisons to sex abuse scandals in other institutions, among them the Roman Catholic Church. A review by America's Catholic bishops found that about 4,400 of 110,000 priests were accused of molesting minors from 1950 through 2002.

That amounts to 4% of priests were identified as perpetrators. Now, one statistic is the percentage of children abused by teachers and the other is the percentage of priests who perpetrated. But even allowing for the possibility that each perpetrator may have multiple victims, it still looks like the problem is at least as serious in the public schools as among the Catholic clergy.
Where's the outrage? It is ok for public school teachers to molest children, but not ok for priests? It is ok to bankrupt the Catholic church, but it is not ok to bankrupt public school districts to pay settlements and give justice to victims?

Kiddie Porn at Work

Pornography is big business, and internet child porn is a big subset of that business. Here is a story from an Insurance industry publication in which an employer is found liable for the internet porn viewing habits of employees. The employee cruised kiddie porn sites at work. The employer told him to stop, but didn't report him to anybody.

In 2000, there were reports that the employee was acting “strange” in shielding his computer screen. Suspicions that he was visiting illicit sites were confirmed in 2001 by the IT director and by senior managers who found child pornography. They discovered the employee had been posting images of his 10-year-old stepdaughter to a child pornography site. Authorities arrested him and seized the computer, finding thousands of pornographic images, including child pornography.

The minor's mother sued XYC, alleging it had breached its duty to report the employee to authorities for his child pornography computer activity. The mother claimed the company's failure enabled him to continue secretly photographing the stepdaughter and molesting her.

Interesting detail not highlighted in this story, which is after all, an insurance publication: the man did not photograph his daughter. He photographed his stepdaughter. Research shows that children are in far more danger from unrelated men in the household than they are from their own fathers. And, children are in more danger from their mothers' boyfriend, than from their mothers' husband.

Do Teachers get a Pass for Child sexual abuse?

Here is a different child sexual abuse story. The different twists: the predator is a female teacher; she is getting a ten year sentence and the school district is not being sued, as far as I can tell, in any way shape or form.
One other interesting tidbit: the story mentions as an aside that the typical sentence for teachers convicted in similar cases is 18 months to 2 years.
Is this form of child sexual abuse less serious than what the priests did? Why aren't teachers who abuse children treated as toughly as priests? Just wondering.

A sixth-grade science teacher who was accused of having sex with a 13-year-old student has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Rachel L. Holt, 35, had pleaded guilty to second-degree rape. She sobbed in court Friday as Superior Court Judge Calvin L. Scott gave her the mandatory minimum sentence.

Prosecutors had wanted Scott to sentence Holt to the maximum of 25 years.

Holt was initially charged with 28 counts of first-degree rape.

Police accused her of having sex with the boy that many times during an intense weeklong affair. She was also accused of plying the boy with alcohol and allowing him to drive her car.

Holt's attorney, John S. Malik, said the sentence was much longer than what teachers convicted in similar cases got. He reviewed 40 such cases and found the average was 18 months to two years.

Spanking Ban?

Readers are starting to react to my townhall column today on the proposal to ban spanking in CA.

Out of Control (and Clueless) Nanny State

A childless legislator here in California (where else?) has proposed a legislative ban on spanking. Sally Lieber, Democrat (naturally) from Mountain View, which is in Northern California (why am I not surprised?) believes this is a proper function of state government.

The bill, which is still being drafted, will be written broadly, she added, prohibiting ``any striking of a child, any corporal punishment, smacking, hitting, punching, any of that.'' Lieber said it would be a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail or a fine up to $1,000, although a legal expert advising her on the proposal said first-time offenders would probably only have to attend parenting classes.

The San Jose Mercury News reports that child rearing experts generally do not agree with a ban on spanking. The "two-swat spank" has been extensively studied. Two swats on a covered bottom do not constitute child abuse, and in fact, can be an important adjunct to reasoning in disciplining a child. The Murky News (as the locals call it. Actually, it isn't a bad paper, as MSM outlets go) interviews one of the leading scholars of corporal punishment, Dr. Robert Larzelere.

Experts in child psychology disagree over whether spanking is a legitimate or effective way for parents to discipline their children. Professor Robert Larzelere, who has studied child discipline for 30 years, said his research shows spanking is fine, as long as it's used sparingly and doesn't escalate to abuse.

``If it's used in a limited way,'' the Oklahoma State University professor said, ``it can be more effective than almost any other type of punishment.'' He added that children 18 months old or younger shouldn't be spanked at all, because they can't understand why it's happening.

As for Lieber's proposal, the professor said: ``I think this proposal is not just a step too far, it's a leap too far. At least from a scientific perspective there really isn't any research to support the idea that this would make things better for children.''

I happen to have an article by Dr. Larzelere and some co-authors in my filing cabinet. It is relatively old, 1998, but still interesting, because it is a comparison of a variety of discplinary strategies: reasoning, and two types of punishment, non-corporal punishment, such as time-out, and non-abusive corporal punishment. Here is his summary:

Parents should use the least aversive disciplinary tactic that is likely to be effective in gaining compliance (i.e. reasoning). When that tactic does not receive appropriate compliance, then parents should back up the initial tactic with a slightly more aversive tactic (e.g. non-corporal punishment such as time-out). Only for continued defiant noncompliance should a parent resort to nonabusive corporal punishment to back up the noncorporal punishment.... (Citing another author) Roberts has shown that a back-up such as a two-swat spank is necessary to make time-out effective with the most non-compliant preschoolers.

(Journal of Marriage and Family, 60, No. 2 (May 1998) 388-403. Note to self: this study looked at children 25 to 38 months of age.)

In other words, if you are dealing with a sweet, even-tempered child who wants to please, you can reason with them and they will comply. But there are some little stinkers who need something a little firmer. When Dr. Larzelere wrote the above article, his affiliation was listed as "Boys Town." Presumably, he observed some troubled kids during his time there.
I too, have observed some troubled kids. There are indeed kids who will not comply with adult instructions, no matter how nicely you talk to them. (Parents who talk too much have been studied too. The experts call them "natterers.") The presumption that spanking is always and everywhere a form of child abuse or violence assumes that whatever harm the child endures in the spanking is more serious than the harm he endures by being allowed to continue in his defiance. This is the core assumption that has to be challenged.
In point of fact, preschool aged children need to comply with adult instructions. They do not need to learn to negotiate, or to find ways to evade authority. Children need limits and structure. The most disturbed kids need limits most of all. You can't heal the kids without setting limits.
As foster parents, we were prohibited absolutely from any corporal punishment. We coped. But there are plenty of kids who would have been much better off with the ocasional "two-swat spank" than they were with the systematic learning that they could defy adult authority with impunity.
Assemblywoman Lieber seems to think that the current standards of child abuse impose insufficient limits on parental behavior. The truth of the matter is that social workers are already, in effect, placing limits on parental behavior. I feel sure that people are inhibited about swatting their kids by the thought that they could be reported by a stranger or a vindictive neighbor.
So here is the essence of Sally Lieber's proposal. Otherwise competent parents will be presumed abusive if they swat their children. The parents will be put in prison for a year and the kids will be put in foster care. The parents of tempermentally difficult children will be the most likely to run afoul of this system. Those difficult kids will be given to foster parents, who will have more constraints on their disciplinary tactics, and more supervision by the state, but who have less direct interest in the well-being of the child. These difficult kids will be less likely, not more likely, to have appropriate boundary setting and limit setting in the absence of a) their parents' ability to swat them once in a while and b) the presence of the parents at all.
This benefits kids, how? This is a cost-effective use of state resources, how? This sends what kind of message to the parents of California?