Two activists in the child protection movement depict a giant
conspiracy against moms and kids, and propose a federal program to
end it. Rosen and Etlin contend that when mothers make allegations
of child sexual abuse in custody battles, they are not believed and
their children are not protected. Our child protection system, they
say, ranks preserving the image of the family higher than
protecting children. The authors include five cases to illustrate
how social workers, judges, lawyers, and health professionals keep
women from asserting their parental rights. In one, a judge allowed
unsupervised visits by a stepfather who had previously been
convicted of abusing his own daughter; in another, a father was
awarded custody after a social worker, knowing of the parents'
bitter custody dispute, refused to credit the child's account of
abuse; in another, a dispute among physicians over physical
evidence of abuse led the judge to charge the mother with
misrepresenting her case and award custody to the father. Legal
maneuvering drags out one case until the child is alienated from
her mother and ends up in her apparently abusive father's custody.
In the final case, a mother who believes that her son has been
sodomized by his father loses her custody fight, kills the father,
and goes to prison for life. Such scenarios occur, say Rosen and
Etlin, because in our patriarchal society women's rights to their
children are tenuous. Feminists, they assert, have ignored the
issue of mothers' rights, opening the way for the fathers' rights
lobby. Their solution: Separate custody and incest issues. Treat
incest as a public health matter, rather than as a crime, by
setting up a child-at-risk classification office within the US
Public Health Service. Details of how this would operate conclude
the text. Sure to be controversial, but too partisan to be
persuasive. (Kirkus Reviews)
"This cogently-argued book is a timely contribution to the
general literature on child sexual abuse." British Journal of
Social Work
" The authors] have gathered information on 206 cases and focus
on five representative examples that illustrate what they see as an
increasing anti-mother bias in the courts. These five cases of the
failure to safeguard children are... effective... Whatever may have
happened in the past, the authors make a well-researched,
convincing... case that the pendulum has now swung the other way.
Now many lawyers, child advocates, psychologists and judges accept
a crazy mother or vindictive ex- syndrome, thus allowing real
perpetrators to continue abuse with no supervision.... In these
cases, judges acquiesce to a paternalistic myth of the American
family and in so doing, ignore the reality of American children."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A needed assessment of a terrible problem." Booklist
..". provocative... " Library Journal
"Recommended." Choice
"Without anger, or hysteria, Rosen and Etlin document the
interlocking, complex ways in which our antiquated system fails
incested children and those who struggle to protect them. Just as
important, they propose an innovative solution. This is must
reading for anyone interested in the problem of child sexual
abuse." Elizabeth Morgan, M.D., Ph.D.
It is comfortable to believe that incest and child sexual abuse
need not concern us because we have institutions set up to deal
with these problems. This book disallows that comfort and shows
that the system has failed, and worse that it has generated a
dangerous atmosphere of denial and cover-up. While Rosen and Etlin
expose a system whose breakdown is shocking and fundamental, at the
same time they present a proposal for relief for the children who
are now trapped like hostages in this social war."
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
