Child Abuse Ignored By Teachers

by JWC
(Canada)

News Item: 
In the past three years, teachers in New South Wales, Australia have failed to report cases of child abuse and neglect in at least 44 cases. Nineteen of these cases are sexual assaults against school students. In Australia, teachers have a legal responsibility to report cases of child abuse and neglect. School principals claim they cannot get the Department of Community Services to act, so have given up reporting many cases of neglected children. More details can be found through the news feed (see Child Abuse News on this site).

My point in bringing this to your attention is that other articles on this web page highlight similar situations in California, U.S.A. It appears that the problem of teachers failing to report suspected or known cases of child abuse is not localized to one area of the world, rather it may be (many would say it is) a worldwide problem. Personally I do not lay the blame solely at the foot of the teachers. I think it is the system or lack thereof that is failing our children. Until we develop a fully functional system of reporting child abuse, followed by appropriate action, we will not overcome this problem.

Darlene's comments to this Child Abuse Article titled "Child Abuse Ignored By Teachers" can be found below. If you do not see the comments I've written, please be patient, as there is a system glitch regarding comments going live on my site. I assure you JWC, I have replied to your article: I posted June 2, 2008, comments titled "An issue of prevention..." Keep checking back to this page. I thank you JWC and my other visitors for your understanding while I work at getting this glitch rectified.

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