|
In Reply to: Re: Family violence? posted by susie on November 21, 2005 at 17:49:01:
Last night on the US news program Scarborough Country, there was a feature story on a Catholic cult call the Tridentines. They do the old Latin-rite mass, among other things. Basically, they practice medieval catholicism.
Much of the program was about an investigation into charges of child sexual abuse among Tridentine clergy in the state of Washington. During the show, they showed a videotape of someone wearing a demon's mask terrorizing a small child. The child (maybe 3 years old) shreaked and sobbed and struggled desperately to escape the clutches of the demon-masked adult.
The newsman (Scarborough) was outraged by this video clip. A Washington state law enforcement authority on the show for commentary watched this segment and said, "No law has been broken--there's nothing we can do."
This statement shocked me, because in my state, the videotaped terrorization of this child would be viewed as strong evidence of psychological abuse. The difficulty would not be in defining the terrorizing behavior as abuse, but in getting the child's parents to cooperate with an investigation that identified the person in the demon's mask for prosecution. Why did they subject their child to this "spiritual training" in the first place?
What I do know about the definition of abuse in the U.S. is that it varies widely by state. What's more, interpretation and enforcement of the law varies by location within a state.
