Protecting the Children

The California Legislature has slipped through a bill that proponents say would help victims of child abuse. In fact, it seems clear that the bill would allow more abuse of children by parents or other family members.

The measure, SB 243, would allow social workers or law-enforcement officials to remove a child under the age of 5 from the custody of abusive parents only if the child was severely injured or if there was thought to be a substantial risk that the child could be severely injured. They could act also if the parent or guardian had been convicted of killing another child through abuse or neglect and authorities suspected that the parent might do it again.

The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), narrowly defines physical and sexual abuse of young children. “Serious physical harm,” Presley’s office says, is synonymous with “severe physical abuse,” which the bill says is any single act that causes “physical trauma of sufficient severity that, if left untreated, would cause permanent physical disfigurement, permanent physical disability or death,” or more than one act “which causes significant bleeding, deep bruising or significant external or internal swelling, bone fracture or unconsciousness.”

Serious sexual abuse for children under 5 years old has been defined as “any single act of sexual abuse which causes significant bleeding, deep bruising or significant external or internal swelling.” Furthermore, a companion measure, SB 1219, also sponsored by Presley, would no longer require social workers to check out in person all reported cases of child abuse, opponents of the measure say. Under this bill, the initial investigation could be made by a telephone call. How an investigator could determine over a telephone the amount of blood that a child has lost or how much swelling or bruising exists has not been discussed.

The Children’s Lobby says that Kentucky is the only other state in the nation that defines child abuse as narrowly as the new California legislation would.

But who are the supporters of the measure? One such organization is Victims of Child Abuse Laws. VOCAL maintains that 60% of the state’s child-abuse reports are either unsubstantiated or unfounded. Technically that is true, but the state records make no distinction between unfounded cases and those in which there was not sufficient evidence to sustain a formal charge of child abuse.

Many state and local government social-service administrators favor the bill as well. Overworked by mounting numbers of child-abuse cases and inadequate budgets, these administrators believe that a lower caseload would enable them to cope more effectively with the most serious child-abuse cases. And then there are the proponents of the measure who fundamentally believe that the government does not have the right to intervene in the family structure, regardless of the consequences to the child.

The bill does have some good elements. It would mandate that any child within the juvenile system must be represented by an attorney. It also would emancipate children from hopeless family situations by allowing them to be adopted much sooner than is currently possible. But the good is far outweighed by the bad.

We urge Gov. George Deukmejian to veto the legislation. This year alone, more than 41,000 California children have been the victims of child abuse. It may be true that the present definition of child abuse is broad and that the temporary removal of a child is left to the discretion of social workers and law-enforcement officers. But this bill with its restrictive definitions of physical and sexual abuse is the wrong solution. If errors are made, and no doubt some are, let those errors be made in favor of the children.