The abuse of children continues: Protecting children from abuse by professionals, Part Four

The recent articles (Goddard 1993a; 1993b; 1994), describing in some detail the battle of the woman who refused to ignore the abuse of her child by a school teacher, have provoked a number of telephone calls and letters. A number of people have praised the tenacity and courage of the mother in continuing to battle against the bureaucracy.One mother has given permission to publish her story of similar experiences in attempting to get the bureaucracy to pay attention to the rights of children to protection. It is of great concern to me that, six years after first writing about this (Goddard 1988), the responses of organisations do not appear to have greatly changed.Where a staff member is accused of abusing a child, the organisations still appear to be more concerned with protecting themselves rather than protecting the vulnerable children (Hechler 1988).I would like to take this opportunity to repeat the questions I asked last year: Why are parents, who do know or suspect that their children are being abused, treated so badly when they attempt to report?Why do services appear to be concerned with protecting the perpetrator rather than protecting the child?Why do such cases so often deteriorate into direct personal attacks on the parents (or professionals) who are trying to stop the abuse?(Goddard 1993a:41)