Atlanta, GA – infoZine – The report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in Child Abuse and Neglect, The International Journal, looked at confirmed child maltreatment cases, 1,740 fatal and 579,000 non–fatal, for a 12–month period.The lifetime cost for each victim of child maltreatment who lived was $210,012, which is comparable to other costly health conditions, such as stroke with a lifetime cost per person estimated at $159,846 or type 2 diabetes, which is estimated between $181,000 and $253,000. The costs of each death due to child maltreatment are even higher.

“No child should ever be the victim of abuse or neglect – nor do they have to be. The human and financial costs can be prevented through prevention of child maltreatment,” said Linda C. Degutis, Dr.P.H., M.S.N., director of CDC′s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Child maltreatment has been shown to have many negative effects on survivors, including poorer health, social and emotional difficulties, and decreased economic productivity. This CDC study found these negative effects over a survivor′s lifetime generate many costs that impact the nation′s health care, education, criminal justice and welfare systems.

The estimated average lifetime cost per victim of nonfatal child maltreatment includes:
$32,648 in childhood health care costs
$10,530 in adult medical costs
$144,360 in productivity losses
$7,728 in child welfare costs
$6,747 in criminal justice costs
$7,999 in special education costs

The estimated average lifetime cost per death includes:
$14,100 in medical costs
$1,258,800 in productivity losses

Child maltreatment can also be linked to many emotional, behavioral, and physical health problems. Associated emotional and behavioral problems include aggression, conduct disorder, delinquency, antisocial behavior, substance abuse, intimate partner violence, teenage pregnancy, anxiety, depression, and suicide.

Past research suggests that child maltreatment is a complicated problem, and so its solutions cannot be simple. An individual parent or caregiver′s behavior is influenced by a range inter–related factors such as how they were raised, their parenting skills, the level of stress in their life, and the living conditions in their community. Because of this complexity, it is critical to invest in effective strategies that touch on all sectors of society.

“Federal, state, and local public health agencies as well as policymakers must advance the awareness of the lifetime economic impact of child maltreatment and take immediate action with the same momentum and intensity dedicated to other high profile public health problems –in order to save lives, protect the public′s health, and save money,” said Dr. Degutis.

Several programs have demonstrated reductions in child maltreatment and have great potential to reduce the human and economic toll on our society. Several examples of effective programs include:

Nurse–Family Partnership, an evidence–based community health program. Partners a registered nurse with a first–time mother during pregnancy and continues through the child′s second birthday. http://www.nursefamilypartnership.org/ link

Early Start, provides coordinated, family–centered system of services: http://www.dds.ca.gov/earlystart/ link California′s response to federal legislation providing early intervention services to infant and toddlers with disabilities and their families.

Triple P, a multilevel parenting and family support system: http://www.triplep–america.com/ link Aims to prevent severe emotional and behavioral disturbances in children by promoting positive and nurturing relationships between parent and child.

If you know or suspect a child is being abused, contact the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1–800–4–A–CHILD or visit the Childhelp website www.childhelp.org

Source: InfoZine

Mark Berndt appeared in court today on charges that he committed lewd acts on 23 boys and girls, ages 6 to 10, between 2008 and 2010. The Miramonte third grade school teacher was arrested Monday at his home in Torrance and is being held on $23 million bail.

His alleged crimes include gagging students aged 7 to 10 with tape, putting 3-inch long Madagascar cockroaches on their faces and in their mouths and forcing them to taste semen.Some parents complained yesterday that officials at the South Los Angeles school should have notified them when photos depicting the abuse were found in 2010.

The L.A. Times has reported that the acts Berndt is being charged with happened between 2005 and 2010 but they also said that school officials weren’t notified until January of 2011. Berndt wasn’t removed from classroom soon after but not fired until the following month and the majority of parents were not notified until yesterday.

Gloria Polanco, the mother of two children at the school asks why, if the principal knew this in advance, he didn’t he inform parents. “How long has he been doing this?” asked Polanco. School district officials say they were forced by law enforcement investigators to keep the case quiet so as not to cross-contaminate any evidence.

The probe began after the film processor, who is required by state law to report suspicions of child abuse and molestation, turned over some 40 photographs to authorities in October 2010. About 400 photos were found at Berndt’s home and at the photo lab during subsequent searches. It’s not clear how many different children were pictured.

Source: KPCC

A bill reforming due-process rights for people placed on Iowa’s child abuse registry advanced out of a House subcommittee on Thursday.

But changes are still on the table for the legislation, which has taken shape through an unusually cooperative process on what had been a sharply contentious issue.

“I think we’re pretty close to crafting some legislation that at least is a good start to protecting people that care for our most dependent children but which also goes a long way to protect the children,” said Rep. Bruce Hunter, D-Des Moines.

As currently written, House Study Bill 510 gives people who have been found to have committed an act of child abuse an opportunity to have their names removed from the state’s child abuse registry after as few as five years.

It also tweaks the appeals process to make it easier for people to become aware of their right to challenge placement on the list and directs the state Department of Human Resources to study further reforms.

Present law places people on the confidential list for 10 years after a finding of abuse, and makes no distinctions among sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect or other gradations of misconduct.

Employers in occupations that interact with children check job applicants’ names against the list, and can deny employment based on a person’s presence on it.

Critics have said the existing system does not provide due process for people to contest their inclusion on the list and argue that different instances of misconduct should be treated differently.

The changes under discussion reflect recommendations generated last year by a diverse group of state officials and interest groups.

Those various sides at one time were “at each other’s throats,” Hunter said, but they have come together to draft a workable solution.

The chairman of the subcommittee considering the bill, Osceola Republican Joel Fry, said the bill and an amendment relating to appeals of placement on the registry would be advanced to the full House Human Resources Committee and could be considered in committee as early as next week.

Source: Des Moines Register

The National Confederation of Disabled People called the action “incomprehensible,” and said pedophiles are now awarded a higher government disability pay than some people who have received organ transplants.The Labor Ministry said categories added to the expanded list — that also includes pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists — were included for purposes of medical assessment and used as a gauge for allocating financial assistance.

But NCDP leader Yiannis Vardakastanis, who is blind, warned the new list could create new difficulties for disabled Greeks who are already facing benefit cuts due to the country’s financial crisis.

“What’s happened is incomprehensible. I think there is some big mistake. The ministry should have a different policy on disability,” Vardakastanis told the Associated Press. “The list contains major changes to disability quotients, which could effectively remove many people from access to benefits.”

The new list gives pyromaniacs and pedophiles disability pay up to 35 percent, compared to 80 percent for heart transplant recipients.

“It’s really not serious to grant Peeping Toms a 20-30 percent disability rate, and 10 percent to diabetics, who have insulin shots four or five times a day,” said Vardakastanis.

Greece has been fighting to avoid bankruptcy since 2009. Public spending on health and welfare programs has been sharply cut under austerity measures imposed as a condition for receiving emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund and other countries using the euro currency.

Independently run welfare programs that survived on state grants have been the hardest hit, leaving some disabled groups, including the deaf, facing sudden drops in their standard of care.

The government is also battling widespread abuse in the welfare system, forcing tens of thousands of disabled people to be reassessed.

Source: AP

Dr Fiona Cram, in a report published today by the Families Commission, says family poverty is “the major contributing risk factor for children” – and Maori children are twice as likely as European children to live in poverty.

Families Commission chairman Carl Davidson said Dr Cram had “a particular perspective on Maori children in care” which the commission did not necessarily share.But a companion report by commission staff, published with Dr Cram’s report, also recommends “a more comprehensive approach” to families that have mistreated their children, including help with mental health and addiction problems and “systemic issues” such as poverty and discrimination.

The two reports show that 52 per cent of all New Zealand children who have been taken into state care from abusive or neglectful parents are Maori, compared with only 22 per cent of the population under age 20.

In contrast, only 39 per cent of those in care are European, compared with 71 per cent of the under-20 population. Pacific children make up 11 per cent of the young population but only 6 per cent of those in state care.

Dr Cram said other countries that had been colonised by immigrant groups showed similar patterns.

“Around the world, indigenous children are over-represented in child welfare systems for many reasons: systemic racism, the application of white, middle-class standards and values to [indigenous] communities, and inter-generational fragmentation of the family and community structure,” she said, quoting an Australian study.

“The high proportion of these children whose families live in deprivation suggests that this over-representation can be substantially accounted for by structural risk factors such as poor housing and poverty.”

In New Zealand, the Social Development Ministry says one-third of Maori children and a quarter of Pacific children, but only one-sixth of European children, lived in homes with incomes below 60 per cent of the median after adjusting for housing costs between 2007 and 2010. It says the main factor pushing up the Maori figure was a high number of sole parents. Almost half (43 per cent) of sole parents on the domestic purposes benefit in the period were Maori.

Dr Cram, who comes from the East Coast iwi of Ngati Pahauwera, found that 54 per cent of Maori, but only 24 per cent of non-Maori, lived in the most deprived 30 per cent of areas in the country at the 2006 Census. She said Otago University research showed that this was partly due to ethnic discrimination.

“If you take a cohort of Maori and a cohort of non-Maori who are the same in age, gender and education levels, the Maori will end up in lower-status jobs,” she said. “Structurally, it’s discrimination. You could say personally, in terms of whanau, it’s because the knowledge of how to move through education into employment is not as embedded in whanau.”

She is evaluating a programme run by Auckland tertiary institutions, Maori Into Tertiary Education (MITE), which helps Maori students to get from school into tertiary education and then into internships in Auckland companies.

Her report praises other programmes working from a Maori value base and she believes the new Whanau Ora policy, which aims to give Maori agencies more flexibility to help families with all areas of their lives, also offers hope.

“But it shouldn’t let mainstream providers off the hook,” she said. “There are still big challenges for government agencies in becoming more responsive to Maori and to working with whanau.”

Source: NZ Herald

After mopping the floors one morning just over a year ago, a Hendry County mother of five left the bucket of water in the garage, out of reach of her 1-year-old daughter. When the older children came home from school, she asked her 8-year-old to watch the baby as she cleaned.

Maybe 10 minutes later, she checked in. The toddler was gone and the garage door was open.

She peered in the garage and saw her daughter’s feet sticking out of the bucket.Paloma Palacios-Herrera drowned Dec. 11, 2010.

The account from state records was one of 10 child death cases caused by abuse or neglect in Southwest Florida in 2010. The deaths were analyzed as part of an annual Child Abuse Death Review sent to lawmakers last week. The report runs a year behind because of the time it takes the state to investigate the deaths.

Across the state, the number of child abuse deaths dropped 23 percent from 200 children in 2009 to 155 children in 2010, the report found. The number of such deaths in Lee County jumped from two to eight children in that time period while the number throughout five Southwest Florida counties decreased from 12 to 10 children.

But Connie Shingledecker, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office major who chaired the death review committee, said that doesn’t mean fewer child abuse deaths occurred in 2010.

“We did not receive nearly as many of the unsafe-sleeping related cases,” Shingledecker said. “It may be more investigative-driven if we’re not recognizing and investigating them as such.”

Shingledecker said unsafe sleeping deaths, such as when a baby suffocates while sleeping with a caregiver or in a crib with bulky bedding, can be mislabeled as sudden infant death syndrome if officers don’t thoroughly investigate using doll reenactments as recommended by the federal government.

“In some areas, they recognize the importance of that, but it’s just not completely embraced by all law enforcement agencies,” Shingledecker said.

The report also noted a decline in all child deaths in Florida and a drop in the state’s child population as potential factors.

Of the eight cases reviewed in Lee in 2010, most children died because of abuse instead of neglect: A 1-year-old was shot by his father, three babies died from blunt force trauma and a 6-week-old died after his throat was slit, records show.

Economic effect

Economic stress could be playing a role in the upward swing of more violent abuse cases, a trend that continues, said Jill Turner, CEO of Children’s Advocacy Center of Southwest Florida, a crisis center for abused children. Infants and toddlers are vulnerable targets.

“The injuries are often more severe with really young children because people don’t know how easy it is to break a bone or to lacerate a liver,” she said. “Then, they get scared and are much less likely to take the child in for care.”

There were no outward signs of abuse when Shy’ana Blackmore, a Lee County 2-month-old, died in January 2010, but an autopsy revealed skull fractures and a lacerated liver, state records show. Her father, Miklos Blackmore, then around 24, was arrested seven months later and is facing a murder charge; a trial is set for later this month.

In 2011, there were five child abuse and neglect deaths in Southwest Florida, although there are several being investigated, according to state Department of Children and Families data. The deaths were not included in the review.

But Mike Carroll, who leads the DCF region that includes Southwest Florida, pointed to commonalities in the 15 cases in the five area counties in the last two years: young children and young parents. None of the children who died were older than 2. Several could have been prevented, he said.

None of the families had open DCF investigations and most did not have any prior ones, said Carroll, noting the need for community involvement.

“With this young population of parents, it’s hard to reach them especially if we don’t know them,” he said. “The child ends up paying for the parent’s mistake with their life.”

Source: News Press

As reported by the Associated Press, disability groups in the country were especially outraged over the government’s decision to add pedophiles to its list of those the state recognizes as disabled individuals.

Among the other “disabled” categories added to the list were exhibitionists, kleptomaniacs, pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists, and sadomasochists.Greece’s Labor Ministry explained that the new “disabilities” were added for medical assessment and to determine who would receive financial assistance from the government.

But Greece’s National Confederation of Disabled People (NCDP) “called the action ‘incomprehensible,’” reported the AP, “and said pedophiles are now awarded a higher government disability pay than some people who have received organ transplants.”

The additions to the government dole come as Greece is drowning in debt and attempting to stay afloat in an imploding economy. “Public spending on health and welfare programs has been sharply cut under austerity measures imposed as a condition for receiving emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund and other countries using the euro currency,” reported the AP.

The updated listing left the NCDP’s head, Yiannis Vardakastanis, wondering if the Greek government could be serious in its intention to grant “peeping toms a 20 to 30 percent disability rate, and 10 percent to diabetics, who have insulin shots four or five times a day.” She noted that the new listing “gives pyromaniacs and pedophiles disability pay up to 35 percent, compared to 80 percent for heart transplant recipients.”

The fact that a socialist nation such as Greece would expand entitlements to whole new “victim” classes is not surprising. But that it would consider “disabled” those individuals whom society has heretofore considered merely criminal is noteworthy.

Becket Adams of TheBlaze.com suggested that instead of trying to do any more to salvage the sinking ship that is Greece, the other nations of the European Union should simply jump ship and try to save their own skins. “When it gets to the point where child molesters, pyromaniacs, and sadomasochists are all standing in the same line waiting to collect disability checks, it’s already over,” wrote Becket. “It’s going to take a lot more than austerity measures to save Greece; its problems are much deeper than that.”

Currently Greece’s national debt hovers at more than $445 billion, and in order to receive its next $165-billion bailout check from the EU and the International Monetary Fund, it has had to promise to cut spending to a bare minimum. That bare-bones budget will apparently now include a monthly disability check to pedophiles and other erstwhile Greek criminals.

Writing on FrontPageMag.com, Arnold Alhert noted that the United States is the largest contributor to the IMF, kicking in 17 percent of its budget. And, wrote Alhert, “while bills to defund our $100 billion contribution are working their way through both houses of Congress, it is more likely that only additional funding in 2012 will be prevented.”

With the United States so inextricably committed to bailing out insolvent EU nations like Greece, Alhert wonders if “American taxpayers might someday be underwriting Greek pedophiles.”

For those Americans prone to cluck their tongues over the reprobate depths to which Greece has apparently plunged, America is not far behind. As reported by The New American, at an August 17, 2011 conference in Baltimore sponsored by the pedophile-friendly organization B4U-ACT, a group of mental health professionals and sympathetic activists discussed what might be done to remove pedophilia from the mental illnesses listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

As reported by LifeSite News, on its own website “B4U-ACT classifies pedophilia as simply another sexual orientation and decries the ‘stigma’ attached to pedophilia, observing: ‘No one chooses to be emotionally and sexually attracted to children or adolescents. The cause is unknown; in fact, the development of attraction to adults is not understood.’ The group says that it does not advocate treatment to change feelings of attraction to children or adolescents.”

Might pedophilia make it on to the list defining Americans With Disabilities? Don’t be too quick to dismiss such a possibility. Alhert charted the line of thinking that turns a mental illness — or criminal inclination — into a justification for entitlement, noting that “for progressives, the term ‘lifestyle choice’ becomes a viable substitute for moral depravity. And once ‘criminals’ become ‘victims,’ we are well along the path to where such victims eventually become ‘disabled.’”

Source: The New American

Outraged by the dehydration death of an eight-year-old Aboriginal girl in a West Australian desert on Tuesday, Hannah McGlade, West Australian Aboriginal Family Law Services chief executive, told The Australian we were spending too much time as a nation debating rights and constitutional change instead of Aboriginal children’s safety.“The case raises serious issues about Aboriginal children’s safety, but we probably won’t have a public debate on that because the rights focus typically tends to neglect children,” she said.

“We have had significant and lengthy national consultations and debate about the Constitution. This case highlights the very severe human rights issues facing Aboriginal children, and it should be regarded as just as important or more so than the debate over the Constitution.

“We need to be talking more about the human rights of Aboriginal children, including children’s right to life and security of the person.”

Former federal intervention chairwoman and retired Children’s Court magistrate Sue Gordon said the Tjirrkarli community near Warburton was a good one and she was surprised the tragedy had occurred there.

She said WA was meant to have multifunctional police stations, which meant police and child protection officers were co-located.

“There is supposed to be a Department of Child Protection officer based in Warburton full-time,” she said. “Was the position filled? If that position wasn’t filled, that means there was a gap in the services. If there isn’t an officer there, that’s something the department should really be worried about.”

Dr McGlade, who has long campaigned for the rights of indigenous children, said Aboriginal children in WA made up more than 50 per cent of children in state care and comprise about one-third of the children in the criminal justice system as victims.

“There is a great deal that could be done, and it is our children who are suffering,” she said.

She called on the Gillard government to enact a commission for children’s rights and ensure Aboriginal children’s issues were fully represented.

“The Gordon inquiry recommended a deputy commissioner for Aboriginal children — this was ignored by successive state governments. The state children’s commission legislation is currently being reviewed,” she said.

“The constitutional debate should not overshadow the reality of human rights for children. This debate needs to be increased at the national level.”

NSW indigenous leader Warren Mundine said that after the focus on child abuse in Aboriginal communities, it was outrageous these sorts of tragedies were continuing. “I don’t understand how these things happen,” he said.

“It’s a totally tragic story from start to finish. Why there were no proper checks in this day and age is unbelievable.”

While we must wait to see the outcome of the investigation, Mr Mundine said, “reform in the child protection area is well overdue, and we’ve got to stop listening to do-gooders and act in the best interest of the child’s safety”.

Source: The Australian

Director of National Council for the Child presents President Shimon Peres with almanac on living conditions of Israel’s

“We don’t invest enough in the prevention or treatment of child abuse,” Dr. Yitzchak Kadman, Executive Director of the National Council for the Child told President Shimon Peres on Wednesday.

Kadman was at the President’s residence to present Peres with the first copy of the 2011 edition of the almanac on ‘Children in Israel’ which had been published for the twentieth consecutive year.Containing hundreds of pages of child oriented statistics, the almanac, which Kadman asserted is the only one of its kind in the world, paints a disturbing picture about the inadequacy of educational, health, social welfare and leisure time services available to the nation’s children.

Citing some of the thought provoking statistics that have been accumulated in the book, Kadman said: “It’s a myth that we love children.” Promises about a better future are constantly made to children, but children can’t live on promises alone, he added.

Kadman called on the government to prove that it means what it says when it talks about what it wants to do for the child population. “We have to do what needs to be done now, and stop talking about the future,” he insisted.

Professor Asher Ben Arieh, the editor of ‘Children in Israel’ and the director of the Haruv Institute established by the Israel division of the Schusterman Foundation to protect the rights of all children and to work towards giving them a safe and secure upbringing, declared that not only has the situation not improved, but in some instances has deteriorated.

He was particularly concerned about the sexual, psychological and physical abuse of children, which over a 15 year period has increased by 180 per cent.

Some 48,000 cases were reported in 2010 alone.

Abuse is not always defined by violence, Ben Arieh explained. Sometimes it’s just sheer negligence.

As far as negligence is concerned, Ben Arieh was severely critical of municipalities which fail to provide sufficient extra curricular activities for youth, as a result of which many children are put risk because they are outside of any supervised framework, and can often be seen roaming shopping malls either on their own or in packs.

At the end of 2010, the total number of children in Israel was 2,519,900, representing 32.7% of the overall population. Of these, 8.6% -a total of 215,477 – live in single parent households compared to 6.8% in 1990. In the forty year period from 1970-2010 the child population has more than doubled from 1,183,000 to just under 2,520,000. Part of the difference can be attributed to immigration, even though the number of child immigrants has been decreasing annually from 54,051 in 1990 to 4,632 in 2010.

Of the 1166,255 babies born in Israel in 2010, 75.5% were Jewish, while the overall percentage of Jewish children in the country in 2010 was considerably lower and stood at 69.7%. Muslim children accounted for 24%, those without religion 2.8%, Christian children 1.7% and Druze 1.9%.

Of these, the only increase percentage-wise since 1995 was in the Muslim community, where the percentage had risen from 20.2%. In all other cases there had been a marked decline in percentage points.

Jerusalem which has the largest population in the country also has the largest child population, and heads the list of births in 2010 by an extraordinary lead of 22,383 compared to only 8,015 in Tel Avi-Jaffa, and even fewer in Bnei Brak which is listed as having 5,662 births. Ashdod was next with 4,258 followed by Petah Tikva with 3,935, Haifa 3,878, Rishon Lezion 3,654, Netanya 3,405, Beersheba 3,261 and Holon 3,106.

One of the astounding statistics relates to the number of children in Israel who are not Israeli citizens. Some 35,000 are children of permanent resident or foreign workers; but of a total of 155,000 are without Israeli citizenship, 77.4% are residents of East Jerusalem.

Of the children in single parent households, 666 are the offspring of soldiers who lost their lives in the line of duty.

Because it is difficult to adopt orphans or children removed from unfit parents in Israel, many adoptions are conducted abroad. In 2010 only 78 Israeli born children were put up for adoption. Of these 48 were babies up to the age of 2.

The year 2007, was a relatively heavy year for adoptions from abroad rising to 221 compared to 174 in the previous year. In 2010, there was a sharp decline to 124. Most adopted babies in Israel in recent years were born in Ukraine and Russia. Up till 2002, there were also infants born in Romania, but adoptions from that country have since ceased. The total number of adoptions from 1998-2010 of children born abroad was 2,463.

Although the legal minimum age for marriage in Israel is 18 for males and 17 for females, legally, anyone under the age of 18 is considered to be a minor. The number of minors who married in 2009 was 4,179 of whom 506 were under the age of 16.

Of the births in 2010, 1,537 babies were born to mothers up to the age of 18; 26 up to the age of 15.

Both Kadman and Ben Arieh noted a very high percentage of children don’t find school to be a pleasant place, as a result of which some drop out because they can’t cope including youngsters from well functioning families.

“Forty five per cent of children tell us they don’t want to go to school,” said Kadman.

One such teenager was a bright young 18 year old by the name of Yonatan, who gave a dissertation on school drop outs, blending statistics with his own personal story. Though obviously intelligent, Yonatan who comes from Tel Aviv, simply couldn’t concentrate in school. It had nothing to do with his family background. His family, he said, was perfectly normal. But Yonatan suffers from an attention deficiency disorder, which none of his teachers recognized. He just kept getting low marks, and one year he did so poorly in the exams that he was kept down.

School was a frustrating place for him, a place in which he felt ignored and humiliated. He was on the verge of becoming a school drop-out when he came into contact with an education counselor who urged him to enroll in the HILA program, a complementary education project under the auspices of the Education Ministry’s Youth at Risk Advancement department, and administered by municipalities across the country. Yonatan has been in the program for two years, and is getting good grades at levels that he never dreamt of when he was in junior high school. He is now working towards a full bagrut. HILA is geared to drop-outs and youth at risk

Kadman pronounced Yonatan a prime example of what can be done for people with special needs once their potential is recognized.

The problem, Ben Arieh pointed is that social services have not grown at the same rate as the population. Every social worker engaged in child welfare has a caseload of 170 files when it is generally accepted in Western countries that the maximum case load should be no more than 30 files. The child social welfare system is in danger of collapse, he warned.

There was some good news however. There has been a decrease in infant mortality, and contrary to popular belief said Ben Arieh, there has been a drop in the incidence of juvenile crime.

Peres who had listened intently to Yonatan, and who was obviously impressed by him, stressed the importance of encouraging young people in the class room and in areas of informal education.

Emphasizing that Israel’s human resources are its best asset, Peres said that if children are not encouraged to develop their potential, the country will have no future. Everyone has untapped potential, he said. He had met with many junior scientists who at ages as young as 12, were incredibly innovative and creative, had produced amazing products and had started businesses, he said.

Peres recommended that every school child undertake a high tech project of some kind and proposed that they should work for two hours each day in a high tech plant to gain the satisfaction of team work and an understanding of the high tech environment.

He couldn’t understand young people who go to the beach and spend hours doing nothing other than lying on the sand just to get sun tanned, he said. “They should make something. They would enjoy it more.”

Source: The Jerusalem Post

The punch was one of many incidents heard in the Auckland District Court today as Judge Brooke Gibson sentenced the 31-year-old mother to seven and-a-half years in prison with a minimum non-parole period of five years.

“It was sustained abuse, amounting to torture,” Judge Gibson said. The woman, who has name suppression to protect the identity of her children, had previously pleaded guilty to 25 charges. One of them was for assaulting the girl’s eight year-old brother.The charges also included assaulting the girl with a machete and a hammer, kicking her in the crotch while wearing steel-capped workboots, tearing off her toenail and pouring salt and boiling water on the wound, and writing abusive words on the girl’s body.

Judge Gibson said the police summary of facts “makes horrific reading”.

“This is a long, sad story of a litany of abuse on a young child at the hands of her mother.”

Shortly after the girl’s birth she was removed from her mother’s care by Child Youth and Family because of concerns about neglect and abuse.

The girl was sexually abused in CYF care and was returned to her mother in 2008.

Judge Gibson said the girl was slapped on her face and body after allegedly showing signs of “sexual behaviour” towards her brother.

But the abuse got worse and in April last year the mother punched her daughter so hard that she broke bones in her own hand.

She also used weapons including a hammer, machete and steel pole to beat her daughter.

He said the abuse was not only physical but included the mother writing words on the girl including “skank”, “incest” and “mental f***er”.

When police raided the mother’s house in November last year, they found the girl dehydrated and starving. She had been hidden in a wardrobe in the hope police would not find her.

“This is one of the most appalling cases the courts have had to deal with.”

Crown prosecutor Lorraine McDonald said the girl still has scars on her body from the beatings.

“She is too embarrassed to explain to classmates how that was caused.”

She said a psychological report shows the girl still has flash backs.

Ms McDonald read a brief passage from the girl’s victim impact statement where she referred to her parents. “They didn’t give me a chance, they didn’t give my brother a chance either.”

The mother’s lawyer, Lorraine Smith, told the court that her client could not cope with her daughter’s behaviour problems and was let down by Child Youth and Family.

“That little girl was a timebomb waiting to explode and was put back into the care of her mother.”

She said the mother, who was also abused as a child, tried to get help for her troubled daughter, including writing to the Prime Minister.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett wrote back offering six additional counselling sessions and financial help for sports and after-school programmes.

“Sports activities are not what this child needed,” Ms Smith said.

However Judge Gibson said the mother should have persuaded CYF to take the girl back. He also declined to take into account the mother’s background.

“That is not a licence to inflict similar pain and suffering on young children and at the end of the day, the defendant knew what was right and wrong.”

He said the girl may have been a “difficult child”.

“But instead of offering comfort and support, she [the mother] ended up violating and abusing her.”

The woman’s partner has pleaded guilty to two charges of assaulting the girl, which involved the use of a vacuum cleaner pipe and a broomstick. He will be sentenced in February.

The case sparked a ministerial inquiry, the results of which were released by Ms Bennett this afternoon.

“This child was subjected to cruel and barbaric abuse from her own parents in an unusual case where the mother manipulated many into thinking she had her child’s best interests at heart,” Ms Bennett said.

The inquiry was conducted by former ombudsman Mel Smith, and looked at the girl’s case as well as other matters relating to the welfare and protection of children.

It included 13 recommendations.

They include better information sharing, new Child Youth and Family workers for schools, mandatory reporting of abuse and neglect, urgent research on kinship care, and a new Child Protection Court.

Source: NZ Herald