The False
Child Abuse Industry
by John
Knight
The Heritage Foundation estimates
that welfare costs
US
taxpayers $360 billion per year, and it
is now
clear that
this underwrites a large portion of the
high US
divorce rate -- the highest in the world
--
and one of
the highest illegitimacy rates. The
Coalition
of Parents estimates that the "false
child
abuse
industry" costs US taxpayers $285
billion per
year. This
is a case in which the medicine did more
damage
than the disease -- more children were
damaged
by their
resulting fatherlessness than were
protected
by this
"industry." "Child support" may be only
$14
billion
per year, but the psychological effects
on
family
dynamics contribute more to family
breakup than
just the
dollar incentives would imply. (See
Fathers'
Manifesto
statistics for cites of all reference
sources in
this article.)
Thus about
41% of the $1.6 Trillion national budget
is
wasted on
programs which do little other than to
undermine
family unity, with terrible
consequences. As
the
following ROFF (Rate of Fatherlessness
Factor)
suggests,
for each $12.5 billion increase in the
last
3 decades
in the annual expenditure for welfare,
the
rate of
fatherlessness rose 1%, and for each 1%
increase
in the rate of fatherlessness SAT scores
declined 3
points, and the prison population
increased
by 41,296
inmates [attachment A].
It seems
that the cure is worse than the disease.
In
child
abuse, each child taken into custody by
government
is "worth" between $150,000 and $300,000
in
federal
funds to a state or county agency,
providing a
huge
incentive for social workers to cut
corners and
ignore the
consequences of their actions. So they
do
this to
increase their own job security.
In an
absurd allocation of power, social
workers have
been given
legal immunity and presently cannot be
held
legally
accountable for their mistakes. These
people
act as
agents of the government, and in a
democracy,
no
government agent is allowed power
without
accountability. These legal gods have
been allowed
unparalleled leeway in rampaging over
parents' rights,
and they
often totally ignore the rights of the
children
they are supposed to be protecting.
Any parent
who challenges them is threatened by the
removal of
their own children under the most
bizarre
charges.
And children who are removed are used as
hostages
to negotiate even more bizarre terms --
with
one mother
who worked at McDonalds' told "either
quit
your job
and go on welfare, or don't see your
children
again."
The impact
of "unsubstantiated charges" alone on
families'
finances and morale may cost more than
the
$285
billion direct federal expenditure.
Funded
through
more than 300 federal programs, the
"false
child
abuse industry" costs the taxpayer more
each
year than
national defense. The Mondale Act of
1973
made this
industry a "growth industry," increasing
child
abuse reports more than 4 fold to 2.9
million
last year,
and increasing unfounded sexual abuse
reports
more than 28 fold to 210,460. It is
counterintuitive and plain un-American
to charge 3
times as
many parents of an unsubstantiated,
financially and emotionally devastating
crime, as
those
accused of substantiated charges. The
population
increased
by 19% and the rate of fatherlessness
increased
considerably during this time, but could
this alone
account for an overall 166% increase in
substantiated charges?
A quick
estimate of the number of children
murdered
each year
provides a bit of a beacon into this
shady
area. The
Department of Justice estimates that
2,475
children
were murdered last year. In every war
the US
has fought
the ratio of wounded:killed is a fairly
constant
3:1. Applying the same logic to this
"war" on
families
and fatherhood, we would have expected
7,425
"wounded"
children, rather than the 1,194,460
actual
cases of
"substantiated child abuse." Is it
reasonable
to believe
that the real wounded:killed ratio is
483:1
just
because highly funded, under trained,
unregulated
social
workers say so? What percent of these
charges
of child
abuse cross the line between child
discipline
and actual
abuse, particularly when a 10 year old
boy
today who
is told to do his homework is more
likely to
reply
"I'll call 911 if you do that," rather
than
"OK."
If the
education system had improved during
this time,
the
managers of this "industry" could argue
that such
overkill
is worth an extra $285 billion per year.
But
this
muddling of the distinction between
student
discipline
and child abuse in the last 3 decades
led
to SAT
scores plummeting 77 points, and the US
Department
of Education reports that in
international
math
competition the US is almost at the
bottom of the
list, with
only Jordan lower, and in language only
Poland is
lower. The success of this "false child
abuse
industry" in breaking up families, and
in
lowering
child discipline in intact families,
must be
considered
when calculating its overall impact, and
must be
called to account.
What is
abuse today? The Burbank City Council
defines
spousal
abuse as "giving the woman the silent
treatment"
in an official government publication.
And
in a
recent forum on Intimate Violence
sponsored by
Dr.
Richard Gelles, which included the very
social
workers
who are responsible for identifying and
filing
abuse
charges, merely pointing out to them
that
mothers
are reported by the Department of
Justice to
be 55% of
the perpetrators of child murders
resulted
in their
almost immediate unanimous consensus
that:
"The male
lobby is really a batterers lobby. It's
really a
rapists lobby. It's really a child
sexual
abusers
lobby. It's trying to make everyone
believe
that it's
advocating for men, but it's really
advocating
for batterers and rapists -- allowing
them
to
continue, condoning their violence. It's
trying to
divert
attention from the victimization of
women and
children
so that the batterers and rapists can
continue
to get away with controlling, abusing
and
hurting
women and children."
"This new
-- or continuing -- assailants' lobby is
still
trying to do the same thing -- discredit
the
shelters
and battered women's movement by calling
them
anti-male.
(They still calls us lesbian -- check
out
