Child Abuse Within the Legal System Essay

Child Abuse within the Legal System

My group and I chose to research the topic of Child Abuse within the Legal System. My job was to research the statistics. My group and I wanted to find out exactly how much child abuse was happening by people employed within the legal system. How many of these cases involved officers of the law and how much information was accessible for the public to see. When researching this topic many statistics came up on child abuse as a whole, but very little regarding employee’s within the legal system. I did find that at least forty percent of the families of police officers are experiencing domestic violence. Studies show that domestic violence is 2 - 4 times more often in police families than in normal American families. I think the reason why there is more abuse in officers’ homes is because officers want to be in control. They feel that everyone needs to abide by them. There is cases reported everyday about officers sexually or physically abusing children. A high percentage of officers who abuse their own children also abuse other children. Police officers know that children are very vulnerable. They abuse them because they know that they can scare them enough that they will not tell anyone what is being done to them. When an officer abuses a child he or she is often too afraid to tell anyone. Children are frightened, because officers have a gun and could hurt them; they believe no one will believe their word over the officer’s word; and they are afraid the officer will find out where they live and come to kill them. Research shows that in many abuse cases involving a police officer the victim will not call the cops in fear that the officer who takes the report might be one of the abusing officer’s friends. When reading this fact, I could understand why a victim would not want to report what happened. I would be afraid too. They definitely should have a number you can call to report abuse involving anyone in the legal system. Then they can assign officers from a different county to go out and take the report. I wanted to find out what happens to officers who have been accused of child abuse and domestic violence. I found that in 1994 that out of one hundred and twenty- three police departments almost half of them did not have a policy for handling officers who had been involved in domestic violence. The only discipline measure taken by most police departments is that an officer involved in any abuse seek counseling. From watching Deliver us From Evil and Lockup I do not believe counseling works. These men explain multiple amounts of times that they are unable to control themselves when it comes to sexually or physically abusing someone. I believe officers of the law should have a no strike policy. If they are anyway involved in a crime they should no longer be able to be an officer. The 1994 survey also stated that only nineteen percent of the police departments stated they would terminate an officer if they were accused twice of domestic violence. In the late 1990’s twenty-three domestic violence and child abuse complaints were filed against the Boston police department officers, but none of them were prosecuted. In the mid 1990’s there was an open investigation on two hundred and twenty-seven police officers. Ninety-one of

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