Encouraging news on child abuse front

I posted this in the Amazon, Spanking your children should be illegal forum
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We interrupt this forum for some breaking news!

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=9730224

A massive new federal study documents an unprecedented and dramatic decrease in incidents of serious child abuse, especially sexual abuse. Experts hailed the findings as proof that crackdowns and public awareness campaigns had made headway.

An estimated 553,000 children suffered physical, sexual or emotional abuse in 2005-06, down 26 percent from the estimated 743,200 abuse victims in 1993, the study found.

“It’s the first time since we started collecting data about these things that we’ve seen substantial declines over a long period, and that’s tremendously encouraging,” said professor David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire, a leading researcher in the field of child abuse.

“It does suggest that the mobilization around this issue is helping and it’s a problem that is amenable to solutions,” he said.

But the study points out that 500,000 children were still abused. That is not acceptable, especially in view of the fact that the abused often turn around and abuse others. We must get ahead of the problem and stop sweeping up after the harm has already occurred. Nonetheless, we see that preventive measures do help and that should give us hope we are moving in the right direction.

What would really help is to develop a national policy that set forth requirements for competent parenting and widespread parental training classes. As a final measure licensing of prospective parents could be the next step. Abolishing all forms of physical punishment and verbal abuse must be instituted. There is never any reason to hit a child or threaten them with violence.

The libertarian and conservative religious ideology that family privacy trumps any efforts by the state to intervene in family matters until damage has occured has to go. Parents are not free to do as they please to their children.

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Posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 5:32 am in Child abuse, Children's rights, Human rights, Social research.
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