The Hunt for Child Abuse
Marvin Schick
If the monitoring of possible child abuse situations inside the school is at times enveloped in complexity and ambiguity, the role that school officials are now being asked to play regarding what occurs elsewhere must be infinitely more difficult. Schools are increasingly expected to be on the lookout for possible abuse in the home or other settings where children have contact with adults and to report any such signs to appropriate authorities.
This development is in line with the contemporary expectation that in addition to their core educational responsibilities, schools must attempt to counteract social ills that can undermine the ability of children to benefit from their classroom experience. If students come to school ill-fed or from an environment that promotes delinquency or other improper behavior or are the victims of physical abuse, the school is regarded as the best opportunity available to society to provide remedial services. While there is an obvious connection between this additional role and education, the prime catalyst for the new responsibilities is the inability of other social instrumentalities to perform a similar role.
Schools therefore have become surrogates for the home and they are regarded as the antidote to what is not working in the lives of children. There is an obvious logic to involving schools in out-of-school child abuse.
It is unacceptable for teachers to ignore indications that students in their charge may have been abused, whether there are physical signs or abrupt adverse changes in behavior or educational performance. What is problematic is the requirement that faculty and other school personnel must look out for more, that they must seek and search for evidence even when the signs are not all that apparent. Teachers must act as much when they fear abuse as when they have concrete evidence.
As Justice Holmes wrote, "the life of the law is experience, not logic." There is already far too much evidence that the hunt for child abusers has resulted in modern-day witch hunts in which children have told fantastic tales of adult abuse after being prodded and programmed by prosecutors, social workers and self-designated do-gooders. The frightening details have been reported by Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal. Parents, clergy, teachers and others have been imprisoned on trumped up charges, in large measure because responsible people acted out of fear. Fear is a dangerously fickle emotion, something that must be handled with care lest it get out of control. As Justice Brandeis expressed it in reference to the Salem witch hunt: "Men feared witches and burned women."
The sordid record should at least produce a measure of restraint among those eager to uncover each possible incident of child abuse, no matter how distant or improbable or ambiguous. For religious Jews there are other cautionary factors arising from rules of evidence established by Torah law. We are not at liberty to disregard these rules because we believe the stakes are too high or out of a determination to punish wrongdoers or because we believe that they are not relevant to contemporary conditions. One rule concerns the testimony of children. Such testimony is usually not credible, except perhaps when there is acceptable corollary evidence, and it is never acceptable when it is given against parents. A child's imagination is powerful and far-reaching, therefore at once potentially glorious and potentially dangerous.
There are further reasons to be restrained in accepting the judgment of social workers and certain other mental health professionals. Guesswork abounds in their fields, as there usually are no clear boundaries for assessment and diagnosis. This opens the door to subjective judgment. Even if we do not accept the more critical view that there are those in these fields who themselves need help, there are good reasons for caution. As underscored in the previous Newsletter, persons who are accused of abuse have their rights.
The hunt for child abuse is now a big issue, which means that there are funds available for those who join the hunt. This, too, should engender pause, for wherever funding - especially governmental - is to be had to alleviate a social pathology there is a powerful instinct to exaggerate. Sadly, this seems to be true for several Orthodox groups which in their greed have made loose and false claims suggesting that the religious Jewish community is awash in both incidents of child abuse and in a near conspiracy to mask the truth. This is shameful, to put the matter gently.
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