I've been thinking....

and I realized that this discussion has been about preventing child/spousal abuse in the future, when the real crisis is how do we help those members of society who are being abused/neglected today. That may be the only way to end abuse and abusive relationships in the future.

A friend made an interesting comment once, when she said "It takes a village to raise a child." Looking back over my formative years, I realize that statement is very true, because I was one kid who if she tried anything illegal, my grandparents would have known about it five minutes later, that's how well known I was in my neighborhood.

Ok, if the village/neighborhood is going to help a family raise its child, make it legally responsible for getting involved. There is a law in France, which makes it illegal for someone who comes upon an accident not to give assistance to those who may have been injured in that accident. A variation of that to help stamp out abuse may be, that if Neighbor A is an abuser and Neighbor B suspects that he is and doesn't report him, and as a result Neighbor A is able to kill his spouse/child(ren) then Neighbor B is charged with being an accessory after the fact.

I want to take a moment to relate an incident which still haunts me to this day. An extemely close childhood friend of mine was a victim of abuse by a parent. I knew about it and to this day, it haunts me that I didn't do anything to help end the suffering. And to make matters worse, we lived just up the street from a police officer.

That's where I see the first step to stopping abuse. Give the local police forces authority that if someone reports a suspected case abuse (either children or spouse), they can go in and investigate. No longer do they have to wait until court orders are obtained to protect a family. I know of a case right here, where a woman was in the hospital recovering from an attack by her husband and had a restraining order saying that the husband was not to come within xamount of yards of her or her family. Well, guess what, the husband violated that order, walked into the hospital, up to his wife's room and shot both her and her mother dead, before fleeing the scene. And when police finally caught up to him, he was dead of a self-inflicted wound. A copy of the restraining order was apparently attached to the woman's chart at the foot of the bed. Restraining orders don't work. What will work is putting child/spousal abuse into the criminal code with tough penalties and make abusers criminals as well as those who aid and abet them by covering things up, though not the victims.

When an abuser is caught, don't charge him with simple abuse (or whatever passes as a criminal charge these days); they need to be charged with assault or if a weapon (like a belt) is used, assault causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon. It's time to stop continuing to victimize the abuse victims and insteaad put the guilt where it belongs, at the feet of those who abuse. Secondly, once the abusers are charged, no bail, to protect the victims. Then the victims should be allowed a restraining order against the members of the abusers family to prevent retaliation for the supposed embarrassment being caused by having this go public.

Then once convicted, the maximum sentence under each charge is applied, no appeal allowed and definitely no shortening of sentences (either by appeal or time off for good behavior) should ever be allowed.

A friend on her blog, the Canuckian; http://wtg.braveblog.com has a link to a story where a judge shortened a convicted abusers sentence. Any judge who does that in the future, should be facing an automatic criminal misconduct investigation.

The only way abuse is going to be stopped is strong mandatory changes to the criminal code and the justice systems of the world.

To be continued