Hey guys,
So like I said in class, I decided to drop my voter ID topic. It would have been such a torture to research and write about something that I’ve worked on before. I had then decided that I would go into child abuse, specifically, increasing the penalties for parents that abuse their children. The decision to move along with this topic was more of a personal choice.
During the last legislative session working in Albany, I met a child who was abused by his father. Here is a link to an article about www.wgrz.com/news/article/167444/1/Jay-Js-Law-Gets-Big-Push-From-Senate-Majority-Leader . Basically, the JJ was abused by his father as a baby and his family, as well as their supporters, believe that the punishment was too lenient. This year, JJ’s family, with the support of legislative leaders from both the Assembly and Senate, attempted to introduce into law harsher punishment for first time offenders as well as repeat offenders. Unfortunately, it did not pass.
This of course is an isolated case that has motivated the attempt to prevent child abuse and recidivism through legal means. But although isolated, child abuse is a widespread problem. According to the Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse, in New York in 2005, there were 42,000 proven child abuse cases. But the truly alarming statistic is the fact that in 14.1% of the cases, within 6 months, the children were abused once again.
Although the direction of the paper has not been fully organized, it must be mentioned the psychological state of the abusers. Were they abused themselves as children? Was physical abuse other family members also present in their childhood? And if abuse was present, were there signs in their adulthood, which if were noticed, would have prevented the abuse of their children? There will be more questions that need to be asked as research increases, but for now these are the only ones that have come to mind.
