With regard to Assemblywoman Sally Lieber's stated intention to propose a bill making it a crime to spank your child, I have this to say: We should thank her for focusing the state's attention on the need to protect the children of this country. The United States has not, in most arenas, done more than pay lip service to keeping our children safe.
As well-intentioned as she may be, I ask Ms. Lieber to consider instead using her influence to provide the resources necessary to adequately investigate and prosecute child abuse using existing laws. Thousands of crimes against children are reported every day in this country, many of them valid, and we don't have the legal infrastructure to do much about many of them.
I have served as the chairwoman for a state coalition of Children's Advocacy Centers for the past two years. In the U.S., the method of child abuse investigation that has been proven to be the most cost-effective and least traumatic for the young victims is a multidisciplinary team effort. One such example is the program that Palomar Pomerado Health has operated in the community of Escondido for 22 years. There are 54 such centers in the state of California.
The team members in most communities are medical, child protective services, law enforcement, prosecution and mental health. For six years the state network of these centers has worked with legislators to introduce bills that would provide additional funding to assist in the development and sustenance of these efforts. As of this writing, the bills have not succeeded.
Attempting to pass legislation that expands the definition of abuse, when there are inadequate resources in place to investigate and prosecute under already existing laws, is counterproductive. You will not locate a child abuse detective, child protective service worker or family protection district attorney in the state of California who will tell you that they have enough staff to do the kind of job they feel each and every child deserves. They are overwhelmed by the number and complexity of the abuse cases being presented on a daily basis, and there is no help in sight.
The truth is that, while everyone wants children to be safe, no one wants to pay for it. The priority quietly and quickly diminishes for both the public and for elected officials when it comes time to decide what we value enough to pay for.
There are few publicly financed abuse-prevention efforts. There are far too few investigative agents to deal in a timely way with the reports already into hotlines and police departments. There is no money allocated for the parenting classes Ms. Lieber refers to, and the passing of a new law will not fix what is already broken.
I would appeal to Ms. Lieber to ask California legislators to demonstrate the outrage that the abuse of our children deserves. We don't need an anti-spanking law. We need money for frontline prevention and public service campaigns. If you doubt the power of the media in prevention, the incredible reduction in the SIDS rate that occurred with the "Back to Sleep" program should help you decide how effective mass exposure to a subject can be.
We need increased funding to allow law enforcement and protective services to hire enough staff to perform at the level they would like to. Intervention is prevention for that child.
We must not rely on the passions of a few to make sure that parents have adequate support when they need it. At present, we can mandate that a mother separate from the abuser, who may also be the primary breadwinner, in order to maintain custody of her children. But we have no process in place to help her do that and still ensure that those same children are fed and sheltered.
Enacting a law that penalizes spanking will not improve anything. More likely, it will increase the secrecy surrounding a child's environment and decrease the likelihood that the child will talk to anyone about it.
I am not a proponent of physical force to control or teach a child. I have spent my professional life talking to child victims of excessive discipline and the siblings of children who did not survive the lesson. But before we legislate for laws that we have nowhere near the capacity to investigate or prosecute, let's make sure that we can enforce the ones we already have.
I appeal to Ms. Lieber to use her passion effectively. This bill has the potential to alienate her peers and constituents and decrease their receptivity to enhancing services for children and families. There is a lot of work to be done making what we have effective.
Valley Center resident Cathy McLennan, MSW, is the supervisor of the Forensic Health/Child Abuse Program at Palomar Pomerado Health.
