Comments for Where Were Child Protection Services?

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May 07, 2008
 A system in need...
by: Darlene Barriere - Webmaster

The grandmother received what amounted to a slap on the wrist for brutalizing and torturing her granddaughter. Particularly disturbing was the fact that the grandmother admitted she knew what she was doing was wrong when she said she didn't take the 4-year-old to the doctor because she didn't want to be exposed as a child abuser. Yet her admission does not appear to have been taken into account in the sentencing phase of this case.

There was a lack of what many would consider an appropriate sentence for the actions and inactions of this grandmother, but the underlying issue in this case is that of a system that is woefully lacking.

The court case and media attention around it resulted in little insight as to how it is that child protection officials failed to identify this girl as high-risk in the hands of her emotionally troubled grandmother.

There should have been follow up by child protection services. But even now, three months after court was held and the grandmother was sentenced, two years after the 4-year-old was removed from the abusive home and hospitalized, the only public accounting of this horrific case of abuse and the child protection system failures surrounding it, has been through the newspapers.

Without a public inquiry, without recommendations for procedures to follow to ensure this does not happen again, this WILL happen again.

Without adequate human and financial resources, children will continue to fall through the cracks of a system intended to protect them, a system that cannot be relied upon for even its known-to-be-high-risk children. What does that mean for abused children who are identified as not high-risk? What does that mean for ALL abused children?

Darlene Barriere
Violence & Abuse Prevention Educator
Author: On My Own Terms, A Memoir
Jun 14, 2008
 More of the same
by: Anonymous

It means more child abuse, that's what it means. So sad that nothing has changed and that children are still ignored. When will we learn? I fear the answer to that is "too late".

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