Maltrato infantil (Continuación)

Nine-year-old Jean has lost almost all of his sight. His condition started when he was very young and progressively got worse. After several visits to a local healer, his parents took him to a medical doctor in the city hospital. They were asked to pay $120 for a surgical procedure to restore Jean’s sight. Unable to afford the fees, they abandoned his treatment.

Now, Jean is left with minimal vision in just one eye. Living in an urban community in Togo, he pulled out of school two years ago as he could no longer navigate his way without assistance. He is routinely harassed by other children and adults in the community for his disability.…  Seguir leyendo »

During the Great Recession, child abuse and neglect appeared to decline. Incidents reported to local authorities dropped. “The doom-and-gloom predictions haven’t come true,” Richard Gelles, a child-welfare expert at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Associated Press in 2011.

The real story about child maltreatment during the recession is a grim one. I spent months studying this topic, using a number of different data sources, including Google search queries. I found that the Great Recession caused a significant increase in child abuse and neglect. But far fewer of these cases were reported to authorities, with much of the drop due to slashed budgets for teachers, nurses, doctors and child protective service workers.…  Seguir leyendo »

The world’s newest and youngest liberation movement will make its presence felt at a summit in Washington this week. The Common Forum for Kalmal Hari Freedom, the Nilphamari Child Marriage Free Zone, the Ugandan Child Protection Club, the Upper Manya Krobo Rights of the Child Club and Indonesia’s Grobogan Child Empowerment Group may not yet be household names outside their own countries, but schoolgirls demanding an end to child labor, child marriage and child trafficking — and inspired by the sacrifice of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl shot for wanting to go to school — are borrowing the tactics of the U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

The files released last week by America's largest Catholic archdiocese revealed new and disturbing details about how church officials schemed to protect priests accused of molesting children. But was the scandal in Los Angeles really so much worse than in other places?

Sadly, no. The details emerging from the documents mirror what happened in archdioceses across the country, as church officials time and again put their own concerns above the needs of victims.

One of the earliest cases to draw nationwide attention involved Gilbert Gauthe, a priest who raped dozens of boys in rural Louisiana. By 1984, when Gauthe was indicted on 34 counts of sex crimes against children, church officials had been aware he was abusing children for at least a decade.…  Seguir leyendo »

One cannot choose to not be a pedophile, but one can choose to not be a child molester.

As details of the accusations of sexual abuse emerged from the Jerry Sandusky trial, and as the public looks on with horror, a central element to the case that has received scant attention is pedophilia itself.

"Pedophilia" was long used as a synonym for "child molestation," and both were often seen as psychological failures of self-control. Child molesters were thought to be acting out their own histories of abuses, reacting to fears of adult relationships, or manifesting a symptom that might be resolved in psychotherapy, after which they would no longer be pedophilic.…  Seguir leyendo »

On Monday the media were allowed to name the teenager Daniel Bartlam, who bludgeoned his mother, Jacqueline, to death with a hammer last year at the age of 14 years. Such acts are assumed to be uncommon but occurrences are more frequent than we might think. In the United States where guns are more widely available, a parent is killed by their own child almost every day.

Research suggests that children who commit this act fall into one of three categories: the severely mentally ill child; the dangerously antisocial child; and – by far the most common, in over 90% of cases according to one study – the severely abused child who is pushed beyond his or her limits.…  Seguir leyendo »

Dhaki is from the southern region of Ethiopia. At age 13, instead of going to school, Dhaki was marrried and tended cattle for her family. Her husband, 11 years older than she, regularly forced himself on her. Her nightly cries were ignored by her neighbors, and she was shunned by her community for not respecting the wishes of her husband.

Sadly, millions of girls worldwide have little or no choice about when and whom they marry. One in three girls in the developing world is married before she is 18 - one in seven before she is 15. The reasons for child marriage vary: Custom, poverty and lack of education all play a part.…  Seguir leyendo »

A woman calls 911 to report that a baby in her care has gone limp. Rescue workers respond immediately, but the infant dies that night. Though there are no external injuries or witnesses to any abuse, a jury convicts the woman of shaking the baby to death.

More than 1,000 babies a year in the United States are given a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome. And since the early 1990s, many hundreds of people — mothers, fathers and babysitters — have been imprisoned on suspicion of murder by shaking. The diagnosis is so rooted in the public consciousness that, this year, the Senate unanimously declared the third week of April “National Shaken Baby Syndrome Awareness Week”.…  Seguir leyendo »

Beliefs in witchcraft and other occult forces are widespread in Africa, as they are in many other parts of the world. Animist beliefs consider death, disease, crop failure and other disasters not as natural occurrences, but as the result of the activities of supernatural powers. Families commonly consult traditional healers who divine the cause of the calamity. In some cultures, spirits are held responsible, while in others, individuals are identified as witches and blamed for the misfortune. Usually old and marginalized persons are scapegoated, but in recent years there have been increased reports of children, even toddlers, being accused of witchcraft in parts of Africa.…  Seguir leyendo »

I was asked to write this article as a Catholic: as a Catholic the reality that a pope has to summon bishops from any part of the world to discuss child abuse in which Catholic clergy have been involved is distressing. As a European citizen the fact that the horrors that have been uncovered in Ireland are so significant in number, so long term in nature, and so shocking in their depravity means that one can only be aware that words do not do justice to the plight of those whose lives will have been so gravely harmed. In such circumstances only prosecution where prosecution is due is an appropriate response.…  Seguir leyendo »

Hay un nuevo organismo del Gobierno británico cuya supuesta tarea es investigar a uno de cada cuatro ciudadanos para ver si somos posibles maltratadores de niños. Existen mejores formas de lograr el equilibrio entre la libertad y la seguridad.

Creo que el Gobierno británico no ha hecho lo suficiente en sus esfuerzos para proteger a nuestros niños. No basta con que la recién creada Autoridad Independiente de Salvaguardia investigue a todos los adultos que tengan contacto habitual con niños fuera de casa. Como es sabido, la mayoría de los casos de maltratos infantiles se producen dentro de la familia o a manos de amigos de la familia.…  Seguir leyendo »

Una buena parte de la Iglesia católica, concretamente del clero, deja espantados y verdaderamente escandalizados a los fieles que aún creen en dicha confesión religiosa, debido al número cada día mayor de abusos a niños y adolescentes por parte del clero.

Nunca la palabra escándalo ha sido mejor usada. Y lo curioso es que esa palabra fue la usada hace más de 2.000 años por quien, según la Iglesia, fue su fundador y maestro, Jesús, el profeta de Nazareth. Y lo hizo para referirse a los abusos con los niños.

Los exégetas saben muy bien que es muy difícil decidir cuáles de las sentencias importantes que se ponen en boca de Jesús son de su autoría o fueron creadas o manipuladas por los evangelistas.…  Seguir leyendo »

Irlanda logró la independencia en 1922, pero ello no comportó demasiadas mejoras para el país. Habiendo quedado al margen de la industrialización, era una sociedad totalmente agrícola y con una población en constante huida de la pobreza hacia Inglaterra, paradójicamente la antigua colonizadora, o Norteamérica. El historiador Joe Lee ha llegado a afirmar que después de la independencia la situación económica empeoró más si cabe. No existía una burguesía que invirtiera en industria y había poco sentido de innovación cultural o social. En cambio, lo que se daba era un peligroso fanatismo católico que fue a peor, y quien presidió el país durante décadas, Eamon de Valera, representaba una de sus máximas expresiones.…  Seguir leyendo »

Understandably distracted by our own little crisis of trust, we have perhaps not taken in the apocalyptic import of a bigger one across the Irish Sea.

Perhaps it is a vague sense that we knew it all; perhaps reluctance to engage with the horrid details of the Ryan report into child abuse by Irish clerics. Perhaps some think it is old history, a 1950s horror. Maybe there is even a decorous sense that — as a new Archbishop of Westminster is enthroned here — it is tasteless to dwell on the wickedness deliberately concealed by his Church right into the 1990s.…  Seguir leyendo »

Everyone knew. When the Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse issued its report this week, after nine years of investigation, the Irish collectively threw up their hands in horror, asking that question we have heard so often, from so many parts of the world, throughout the past century: How could it happen?

Surely the systematic cruelty visited upon hundreds of thousands of children incarcerated in state institutions in this country from 1914 to 2000, the period covered by the inquiry, but particularly from 1930 until 1990, would have been prevented if enough right-thinking people had been aware of what was going on?…  Seguir leyendo »

And so the Olympics are upon us ....

May God help us.

Since I have already gone on record with a Times Op-Ed article in April saying the games should be banned entirely because of their incontrovertible history of corruption and politicizing, I know I shouldn’t watch. But given my abiding interest in the bizarre spectacle that I call SportsWorld, I won’t be able to entirely ignore the endless soap operas.

I will pay close attention to the Beijing pollution index, waiting for that inevitable moment when the Chinese, with their very serious paranoia and their obsessive drive to create a perfect summer Olympiad, not only ban all cars, factory work, construction and outdoor breathing in the city, but simply move the entire population of 17.4 million temporarily to Queens.…  Seguir leyendo »

En los últimos meses, los medios de comunicación han dado cuenta de dos decisiones judiciales similares, una adoptada en Santa Cruz de Tenerife y la más reciente en Manresa, por las que se retira temporalmente la custodia de las hijas a las madres en ambos casos para atribuírsela a los padres, después de que los peritos hayan establecido que las menores presentan un Síndrome de Alienación Parental (SAP). Este artículo pretende aportar elementos de comprensión de estas resoluciones, dado lo inusual que resulta en nuestro país que un órgano judicial adopte esta drástica medida y lo poco conocida que es aún la alienación parental.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Libby Purves (THE TIMES, 07/11/06):

GAVIN HALL, a responsible health professional of 33, is starting a life sentence after killing his three-year-old daughter, texting his unfaithful wife about it and trying to kill himself. Mohammed Riaz died last week in a fire that he appears to have started in his own home, killing his wife and four children; apparently he thought she was leaving. Last month a former soldier stabbed his baby son and himself to death after his separated wife crossed him. Three years ago another separated man gassed himself and his four sons, cruelly phoning their mother during their last conscious minutes.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Inida Knight (THE TIMES, 05/11/06):

Another week, another horrifying story about men’s frequent and calamitous inability to cope with crisis. Gavin Hall, 33, was jailed for life last week after drugging then suffocating his three-year-old daughter Millie as “revenge” for his wife’s infidelity. He informed his wife of his actions by text message. Hall also killed the family cats, laying out their bodies next to his child’s, before attempting, and failing, to kill himself.

The story is reminiscent of John Hogan’s, who last summer hurled himself and his two children off a balcony in Crete after a row with his wife.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Camilla Cavendish (THE TIMES, 18/05/06):

IMAGINE A COUNTRY where parents accused of child abuse are assumed guilty unless proven innocent. Where secret courts need no criminal conviction to remove their children, only the word of a medical expert, and rarely let parents call their own experts in defence. Where even parents who are vindicated on appeal cannot see their children again, because they have been adopted.

And where the “welfare of the child” is used to gag them from discussing the case ever after. I live in that country.

In that country, a mother who has had her three children taken away broke the gagging order on BBC One on Monday night.…  Seguir leyendo »