Eradicating Child Maltreatment: Evidence-Based Approaches to Prevention and Intervention Across Services
Arnon Bentovim, Jenny GrayHistorically, there have been times when it was possible to assume
that child abuse and neglect did not occur. In nineteenth-century
America, the assertion that children might need to be protected from
abuse or neglect by parents and others who had responsibility for
them was regarded as so outrageous that the case that led to the
New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1874
was prosecuted under animal welfare legislation. In the UK, for
nearly a century, the issue shifted in and out of the public
consciousness, at one point being a major source of concern, and
then forgotten or ignored for lengthy periods. The London Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded in 1884, at a time
when concerns were beginning to be raised about the prevalence of
physical and sexual abuse and neglect; its activities sparked off
debates concerning the limitations of the father’s right to chastise his
children as he saw fit. The rights debate was almost always
framed from the father’s perspective, rarely ever the mother’s, and certainly
not the child’s.
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