What is child abuse? – Massachusetts Daily Collegian

The first time I had contact with the Department of Children and Family Services, I was five. But the first time they became deeply involved in my life was when I was eight. I was sitting on the carpet of my third grade teacher, ma’am. Bushy’s classroom in Agawam, a Springfield suburb completely transformed by the opiate epidemic. We were reading “Harry Potter,” with the class deeply engaged, when the school counselor, a mild-mannered, middle-aged blonde woman, said softly, “Maxwell, can I hold you for a moment.”

A walk down the hall later, I was sitting next to her at a desk, with a DCF social worker on the other side of the table. He asked me questions, and I answered, with the popular story of DCF child molesters essentially turning children constantly in the back of my mind.

The experience of an investigation by DCF is not rare. In 2023, approximately 40,000 51B investigations were conducted in the Commonwealth, drawn from a collection of more than 90,000 reports. Each of these investigations is the result of a credible suspicion of child abuse or neglect. But what exactly is child abuse? It seems like an easy question, which can be found with a Google search. In Massachusetts, however, the answer to that question is complicated, evasive, and spread across a network of laws and agencies.

To demonstrate this, let’s go back to those 90,000 strange reports. In other parts of the world and in the country, it is quite common for child abuse and neglect to be a crime that, if found by the relevant authorities, would result in criminal charges against the parents and the removal of the child from the home.

This is not the case in Massachusetts. In my case, almost every teacher I’ve ever had has filed a 51A against me, but because of the coaching, the fact that children don’t know any environment other than the one they’ve lived in and adults know how to lie, action is necessary. scarce.

In the Commonwealth, before a case can be opened, an initial investigation must show evidence of abuse, which the state defines as “The non-accidental commission of an act by a caregiver that causes or creates a substantial risk of physical or emotional harm or sexual abuse of a child” or “Victimization of a child through sexual exploitation or trafficking, whether or not the person responsible is a caregiver,” or neglect, which the state defines as “Failure of a caregiver, whether intentionally or negligently or the inability to take the actions necessary to provide a child with minimally adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical care, supervision, emotional stability and growth, or other essential care, including malnutrition or stunted growth; provided, however, that such inability is not due solely to inadequate economic resources or solely to the existence of a disability.”

Despite this, more than 80 percent of these cases will never result in the removal of a child from his or her current circumstances and placement with relatives (other relatives, often aunts, uncles and grandparents) or in a foster family. The consequences for parents are essentially non-existent in the vast majority of cases. Despite evidence pointing to their abuse and neglect, essentially none of these parents will ever be charged with a crime. DCF does everything it can, often at the child’s expense, to keep the family together and often refers them to services such as family therapy. In cases of poverty-related neglect, they help families access services from the Department of Transitional Assistance (MassDTA), the agency responsible for administering programs such as food stamps, emergency cash assistance, and unemployment benefits.

And of course, some of these efforts are well-informed and useful, such as helping families access resources to improve their quality of life. However, in many cases of abuse and neglect, the Commonwealth creates monstrous scenarios for victims. In my experience, this is akin to sitting in a Zoom therapy session and listening to a sexually abusive family member talk about how their goal for the week is “to communicate when they need time for themselves.”

In a system where these types of stories are commonplace and the threshold for removal is so high, children often have to engage in risky behavior, such as running away to escape their situation. Therapists often discourage minors from considering such actions in the context of abusive situations. This helps minors avoid the risks associated with these actions, but can lead to worse outcomes for the child as their experiences are typically not taken seriously if extreme action is not taken. This extensive moderate level of abuse and neglect, which DCF considers completely acceptable, can have serious consequences throughout a child’s life, such as increasing the risk of long-term consequences such as CPTSD.

And for the 20 percent of children who are removed, there is still very little chance that their parents will face legal punishment for their abuse. These children are usually removed because DCF suspects that there is a high risk that they will suffer significant physical harm or be confronted with sexual violence. This means that only in the worst cases are children removed from their environment and that even then the consequences for the perpetrators or potential abusers are rare.

Is child abuse a crime then? Morally speaking, yes. But in a legal sense, child abuse and neglect is only effectively brought to court in four circumstances: when a child dies, when a child is sexually abused or exploited, when a child is seriously injured (being placed on life support, broken bone, severe burns or “deterioration of any organ”) and when a child is trafficked.

There are many consequences to this, but it is important to emphasize that we have a system in which a child can be a victim of anything that falls under these four criteria, or be unable to effectively communicate what is happening because of someone else’s actions who is supposed to love you, and no adult will ever be held responsible for the actions. If we were to project the norms of the child legal system onto the adult legal system, we would have a legal system in which abuse and assault are legal as long as there are no lasting consequences; a legal system in which you could destroy the property of others; one in which only blatant and immediate violent crimes would be criminalized.

The fact is that the reason child abuse can be so widespread is because children in the United States of America and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts essentially have no rights. There are no real standards for what children are entitled to, other than minimal food and clothing and not being killed. While defining these norms and rights will require intense thought, debate and research, the alternative is to allow abused and neglected children to continue living as they currently do. Our only option as a society is to take on that task.

Maxwell Austin can be reached at (email protected)