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Child Abuse

Lawyers often broadly refer to laws related to child abuse and child neglect as “child protection” legislation. The principal purpose of neglect and abuse laws is to protect children from future harm. A person's past behavior is relevant in child protection only to the extent that it reflects on his or her capacity to raise children adequately in the future.

Special Nature of Child Protection Processes

In criminal law, a court is concerned with determining guilt or innocence so that it may mete out the proper punishment to the guilty. In child protection processes, if a court is satisfied that a child is not at future risk of harm, it will dismiss the case even if it finds that the parent has harmed the child in the past. Because of this central difference, many of the constitutional rights of accused criminals are unavailable to parents in child protection cases. In addition, the laws defining child neglect are vaguer and more broadly written than judges would tolerate in criminal statutes. Both the quality and the amount of evidence that one needs to prove allegations of neglect are lower than in criminal prosecutions. The standard of proof needed to adjudicate a parent unfit is also lower than in criminal cases.

Every state in the United States has a mechanism for people to report their suspicions of child abuse and neglect. These laws are designed to bring cases of possible wrongdoing to the attention of public authorities who are in a position to help children and assist neglectful parents. Most state laws require professionals who deal with children and who may detect certain telltale signs of child abuse and neglect to report that fact.

These reports become the starting point for most investigations to determine whether coercive action will be necessary to protect a child. In addition, officials place the reports in a computerized statewide central register. In most states, these records are used to aide authorities in detecting abuse. They also may be used to bar people from specified jobs.

Juvenile and Family Courts

Specialized juvenile and family courts hear child abuse cases. Judges sit as fact finders, hearing evidence and making determinations of responsibility. They generally apply child abuse laws only to parents or other adults serving in parentlike relationships. No two state jurisdictions in the United States define child abuse the same, but there are common aspects among them all. Virtually all consider the infliction of serious physical injury or sexual abuse on a child by a parent or custodian to be child abuse. Many of these laws are written broadly to permit child protection agencies to charge abuse when a parent creates a risk of serious physical injury or inflicts psychological abuse. Still others consider the infliction of any injury to be abusive, whether “serious” or not.

Neglect ordinarily refers to a lapse of care on the part of a parent, often involving some degree of willfulness. Generally, neglect covers situations in which parents fail to do something that they should have done, thereby placing the health and safety of their children in danger. Most states consider the failure of parents to supply their children with adequate food, shelter, clothing, and medical care to be child neglect.

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