Dr. Lorandos provides an important introduction to the child advocacy movement

http://www.falsely-accused.net

Dr. Lorandos provides an important introduction to the child advocacy movement

Id like to talk to you a little bit about the history of the Child Advocacy Movement. Back in the 1970s, Senator Mondale, when running for Vice President and again for the Presidency, discovered that one way to get votes was to vote for defense money and that way youd win some votes and youd lose some votes. Another way to get votes was to vote for more money for schools. But youd win some votes and youd lose some votes. But if you voted for stricter laws and police networks to find and imprison child molesters, youd win votes every time. It was a no-lose proposition for the politicians. In many ways it was a good idea because we began to discover in the 1970s that children were being victimized at an alarming rate. Certainly children have been victimized throughout human history, and we want to put a stop to that, but we began to discover, with more sophisticated investigation in the 1970s that children were being sexually abused and physically abused at an alarming rate.

So, in order to get votes and to act on new research about child victimization, Senator Mondale and his colleagues created the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act in the mid 1970s. At http://www.falsely-accused.net/ we explain that the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act was in many ways good law, but unfortunately it had some disastrous unintended consequences. It was good in the sense that it required teachers, ministers, physicians, psychologists such as myself, to report reasonable suspicions of child abuse or neglect. The keyword was reasonable. Unfortunately, in the enforcement of this new law, that word reasonable seems to be ignored. Nevertheless, there remains a mandate on psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians, ministers, teachers, etc. to report. You see, the reasonable suspicion requirement seems to be falling by the wayside because when they do report theyre given civil immunity and if a report is not made, many of these mandated reporters are criminally prosecuted. That means that there is pressure to report but if an absolutely ridiculous report is made, its difficult to hold the reporter accountable; theyre given civil immunity.

At http://www.falsely-accused.net/ we remind clients that another unintended consequence of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act was that millions and millions of dollars were allocated for child abuse prevention systems, child protective systems, and for the prosecution of these kinds of cases, but not a dime for the defense of those whove been falsely accused. Obviously there is tremendous power differential with respect to these kinds of cases. The state, with all of the allocated funds for child abuse prevention systems, child protective services systems, and for the prosecution of these kinds of cases, on the one side, and the person accused on the other. Certainly there are millions of cases every year, but there are an alarming number of false cases and no money whatsoever allocated to either provide for the defense of those cases or to allow people whove been falsely accused to sue those that made the false reports in the first place.

Some of the other difficult consequences that we face as a result of this law are that a number of new laws have come up in each state that reinforce this power differential. For example, a lot of money was given early on for research into what child abuse victims are supposed to look like and some incredible junk-science came out of this government-funded research. One example was the Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome which has subsequently been found to be outrageous junk-science and based on no scientific method whatsoever. Another example was some of the funded research from physicians who described all sorts of physical anomalies as indicators of abuse. Later research came along and demonstrated that no, no, no, these were normal findings by and large. Weve built a team to overcome this balance of power. By specializing, we are able to level the playing field on behalf of the people that we work for. We want to tell you more about that. For more information about the Child Advocacy Movement, see our website at http://www.falsely-accused.net .

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