Phoney Reporting
Saturday, January 01, 2000
It is a victory for humanity that child abuse has been brought to public awareness and shown to have serious long-term effects.
To help stamp out this evil, to maximise our chances of rescuing a child in trouble, we have set up a reporting system that can be triggered off by anybody and responds quickly and thoroughly.
Unfortunately however, this kind of official vigilance also provides unscrupulous or unbalanced people with a quick and easy way of harrassing innocent people, influencing custody hearings, damaging institutions, etc.
Needless to say, investigations into anything as offensive as child abuse cause distress and impair reputations – whether the charges be true or false.
Investigating officials know that they are sometimes used in this shabby way. They just have to stomach it and execute the enquiry anyway.
But it’s high time public opinion took a stand against this abuse of the system. The more the reporting system is used by people for ulterior motives, the less faith people will have in it, the warier the official response will become, and the more thinly spread are the investigators. This strengthens the hand of the real child abuser. Ultimate loser: the abused child.
Ironically then, while posing as protectors of children, the exploiters of the reporting system are white-anting the protection system. In short, if you’re abusing the system, you’re abusing the children!
Philip O'Carroll