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Monday, 31 March 2014

Emotional cruelty is to be a crime

Parents who starve their children of love and affection face prosecution under a "Cinderella Law", The Telegraph can disclose. Changes to the child neglect laws will make "emotional cruelty" a crime for the first time, alongside physical or sexual abuse.
The Government will introduce the change in the Queen’s Speech in early June to enforce the protection of children’s emotional, social and behavioural well-being. Parents found guilty under the law change could face up to 10 years in prison, the maximum term in child neglect cases.
The change will update existing laws in England and Wales which only allow an adult responsible for a child to be prosecuted if they have deliberately assaulted, abandoned or exposed a child to suffering or injury to their health.  
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/10732982/Parents-who-starve-children-of-love-face-jail.html
Unlike civil cases which need only to be judged on the balance of probabilities, criminal cases have a more stringent test and require guilt to be established `beyond reasonable doubt.` How is this to be achieved for `emotional abuse` cases when social workers find it difficult to provide such evidence?

Having said that it is more than likely that emotional cruelty will be assessed by so-called `experts` with the possibility of getting it wrong because a child`s behaviour has multiple causes and an expert`s testimony is only opinion. Then we have to consider if a child`s life will improve if the parents are sent to prison because the care system itself is emotionally abusive.

None of this has been well thought out. Yet the Government`s will to separate children from their parents grows more apparent.

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