Finally a child protection measure worthy of praise. They removed the child, addressed a problem and returned the child, all within 30 days.
Since he was an infant he saw people smoking. He lives in the South Sumatran fishing village of Musi Banyuasin where every fisherman smokes. Ardi's father gave him his first cigarette when he was just 18-months-old. His parents run a street market and during the long hours their toddler was manageable when they gave him cigarettes. Indonesian two year old Ardi Rizal, with a two pack a day habit made international news in May when the video of him smoking went internet viral.
News agencies around the world carried the video story including CBC. His parents could not coax him to quit or make him quit but in the face of his tantrums when pressured to quit, fed him more cigarettes. Chubby two year old fingers twirled a cigarette like a pro and he inhaled like an old-timer. Forty cigarettes per day. Ardi’s parents, who were ignorant of smoking’s dangers and used cigarettes to keep the toddler happy as they worked long hours at a street market. He was made to kick the habit cold turkey when custody of the boy was removed from the parents and in care he was provided with numerous alternate interests and activities which appear to have worked for him. Whether he will stay off the smoke remains to be seen. Indonesian village culture sees a majority of children smoking before the age of ten. In fact this boy's father thought there was nothing wrong with his boy smoking. 'I'm not worried about his health, he looks healthy,' shrugged the boy's father Mohammad Rizal. He hardly stands a chance.
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| Ardi having a drag |
Ardi Rizal was exposed to various activities, including drawing. His mother Diana, in turn, was given parenting classes. Rizal was described as a “happy” boy and has reportedly left Jakarta to go home to his village. The hope is that his father who stayed behind in their village of Musi Banyuasin will not hand Ardi a cigarette again.
5:33 AM Postscript: my opener... “Finally a child protection measure worthy of praise” was a cynical comment rather than an endorsement, altho I am glad he stopped smoking for a month.
Happy Birthday, Ron!
ReplyDeleteOf course cigarette smoking is very bad for a child. But what about the short and long term effects of yanking a 2 year old from his parents, and putting him with a complete stranger for what would - to the child - seem like an eternity? A child of that age, or any age really, has no way to understand what is happening. All they know is that everything they know and care for has been taken from them. This is how psychopaths are produced, and the prison system has plenty of them.
ReplyDeleteIt would appear that these third world countries have now figured out how to exploit the child protection angle. Count on it, there will be many more "removals" thanks to our endorsement of the notion that the state makes the best parent. How many hundreds of thousands of children will get torn from their parents, and put in state "care" where they will - sure as the sun rises - or at least a certain percentage of them - suffer horrific abuse (we already know this happens, so let's not pretend it doesn't).
Instead of the quick, seemingly easy solution of tearing a child from his parents, why not keep the child with the parents? I somehow doubt that these parents would ONLY stop giving their child cigarettes if the child was taken from them for a month. Parents all over the world are the same, and to so blithely presume that this was an okay solution for everyone is to ignore not only the deep bonds a child has with his parents, but also the deep bonds parents have with a child. When you rip them apart like that, they will never really recover.
It's a sign of the times when we think that this kind of government intervention is such a wonderful thing. Maybe we got the kid to quit smoking, but what horrific psychological damage has been done in the meantime. Children are not inanimate, heartless, soul-less objects that can be shuffled to and fro with no consequences. To suggest otherwise is to fail to understand the nature of the human heart. And child protection not only fails to undertand the nature of the human heart, they completely deny that there is a heart. Or at least their actions would make it appear that way.
We have to be very, very careful not to get conned by the child protection propaganda. Making child protection authorities into heroes, when they rip apart a family, when in fact other methods could be employed. And if they can't be employed, do we really want to hand over parenting to the state? Is that really a desirable solution?
How can anyone possibly trust unaccountable government - who can never be sued, at least not in this country, in any meaningful way? How can anyone begin to believe that the state makes the best parent. Once we accept that it is okay to rip a child from his parents because they are ignorant of the health dangers of smoking, we set in motion a horrific slippery slope, whereby children may eventually ending up belonging to the state as soon as they emerge from the womb. After all, we can always find a reason, in this day and age, to deem a parent unfit.
And this is how child protection always gets their foot in the door. They begin with a situation where the majority of people will be aghast at the parents, and have no problem with state intervention. Then, when they set the precedent of child protection intervention, and get people to accept the idea that it's just natural for the state to intervene, they keep making more and more outrageous "removals" until eventually they are like the UK where they will remove children for the most insane of "reasons" such as the "POSSIBILITY that the parent MIGHT do SOMETHING harmful in the FUTURE."
ReplyDelete5:33 AM Postscript: my opener... “Finally a child protection measure worthy of praise” was a cynical comment rather than an endorsement, altho I am glad he stopped smoking for a month.
ReplyDeleteOn Sunday, the Victoria Times Colonist newspaper featured reporting by Louise Dickson. The theme was that there are lengthy delays in finding time for all court hearings The result is that many criminal cases are stayed forlack of speedy access to justice and that there are very adverse effects in the child protection system. It takes an average of 10 months to get a hearing, leaving children in limbo. Another effect is that children are returned to unsafe homes-presumably because judges are not willing to keep children in limbo any longer. Child advocate Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafonde is quoted as saying that there are adverse effects on children.She has requested the attorney-general to release figures on all cases.
ReplyDeleteThe main reason given for the delays is that there is a shortage of judges and that there are a number of vacancies to be filled. This may be one cause, but the Bayne case illustrates many other reasons. To start with it has been a shortage of courtroom space which has caused most ot the recent delays. There were also two other outstanding reasons. The first was that far too many days were scheduled for a case which was based on only one piece of opinion evidence. The ministry called numerous spurious witnesses with no evidence of value. Doug Christie also contributed by keeping them under lengthy cross-examination. Also the Baynes' first lawyer advised them to call too many witnesses whose testimony was not vital to the defense. Another cause was that there seemed to be a fixation that all the hearing days must be sequential. Things got speeded up when someone had the bright idea of taking a day or two here and there as courtrooms became available. Rule of thumb is that lawyers always stretch cases to the elastic limit. I suggest that a fair inference is that if all these elements can be seen in one case, then they probably occur in other cases and the whole provincial arena needs to be cleaned up. We certainly know from the contributors to your blog that many cases go over the ten month period.
Here is the real rub. Not only do many children get taken from their parents without compelling evidence, but it takes for ever to get them back. They do not get their day in court until a great deal of damage has been done. Damage in many dimensions-financial, stress, separation trauma, shaming and on and on. When child protection authorities have so much power, there is great potential for harm unless there is early accountablity. Contributors to this blog are divided in opinion. Some support the concept that child welfare services are necessary to remove children from harm. Others say that one can scrap the legislation and somehow society will find other ways of coping. I can well understand the outrage of the abolitionists when they see a case like the Baynes. However, I think that their breasts would be much calmer if the Baynes had got their day in court in six weeks instead of 30 months. The original case against the Baynes looked strong. An early court day would quickly have shown how fragile it really was. How many days do you need to deliver one piece of opinion evidence? The whole system could be speeded up if the culture of the courts and the lawyers were not so hidebound and mentally locked in. (continued today)
It is easy to criticise, without giving constructive alternatives. I do have a number of suggestions, which I offer here in the hope that someone of influence will read them.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I suggest that the ministry of the attorney-general should contract a duty counsel to represent all parents, just as a contract counsel for the social workers is provided.
Second funds should be advocated so that Ms. Turpel-Lafonde can contract a lawyer as child advocate in selected cases.
Third. There should be a mandatory one day hearing set within six weeks of presentation. This would be a voire-dire hearing. Both ministry and defense counsel should provide detailed reports of the number of witnesses to be called and specifically what sort of evidence will be given. This would be a good way of sorting out fact from opinion and in cutting down the time allocation for each witness. Many items could be entered by consent. For instance all medical reports. Reasonable time limits should be set in order to prevent lawyers dragging it out ad nauseam in order to pad income. Flat fee funding could be explored. They need to learn to think 'outside the box'. These are just a few suggestions from one person. At least some senior AG bureaucrats should brainstorm with judges and others to come up with ideas of their own. Surely they could do better than one retired social worker?
Now on another topic. HAPPY BIRTHDAY RON AND MANY MORE OF THEM!!!
Picking up your smoking infant theme. There is actually a common thread between your story and my topic. Both present the problems of how do we deal with dilemma. How do we deal with a choice of evils? Most people have a great problem in dealing with dilemma and I think that your blog respondents prove my point. Just as with the dilemma of delays in resolving child protection issues. We can see evils in keeping kids in limbo and we can see evils in leaving kids in abusive situations. We can see the evils of letting infants smoke and we can see evils in putting them with strangers in order to detox them. Idealists are the second worst at dealing with dilemma, because they always rationalise that there should be some idealised way of doing things and have difficulty in accepting less. The worst of all are bureaucrats, who are generally incapable of lateral thinking.
When forced to choose between two evils, the most important thing is to be fully aware of that is what you are doing. It is not a good choice,but simply a less bad choice and should always be open to review. Of course whatever you choose half the bloggers will support it and the other half will want your head on a platter.
The more modern way of looking at things is harm reduction. There is always the idealist position, the realist position and the harm reduction position. Take abortion. The idealist sees the choice as a simple one between abortion and non-abortion. The realist sees it as a choice between legal abortion and illegal abortion. The harm reducer sees it as accepting legal abortion, but reducing the demand by bettere contraception. Take drug abuse. The idealist sees it as promoting detox and abstention as the only choice. The realist and the harm reducers join forces in promoting harm reduction. Needle exchanges, methadone instead of heroin and the decriminalisation of drugs. Child apprehension. Some idealists think that all apprehensions are evil and can be prevented by idealised services to unfit parents. Realists know that those services are not available and nothing works with some families. Also that mistakes can be made. Harm reduction is by providing all the services possible before apprehension and prompt attention in court hearings.
Later in the week I will write about the exaggerations of separation trauma.
Thank you so much Ray for your comments today. I have specially valued the second part and the constructive suggestions.
ReplyDeleteRay,
ReplyDeleteI look forward to your writing re: "the exaggerations of separation trauma." Are you going to suggest, I wonder, that the trauma that a child experiences when they are torn from their parents and all they know and love is exaggerated?
My daughter was removed based on the risk of 'potential, future neglect'. This happened in Canada.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post, Ray.
ReplyDeleteAnd, happy Birthday, Ron!
The Times Colonist story is definitely a keeper.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.timescolonist.com/news/courts+crisis+Shortage+judges+leaves+courtrooms+empty+children+limbo/3513087/story.html
MCFD does not consider it damaging that they take kids. If they give therapy for the parents it is meant to deal with the parents 'trauma' that makes them not a good parent or to cope with abuse from other areas. I am not going to do that when my 'therapy' starts next week. The worst thing that ever happened to me was losing my kids and they expect that it is not even necessary to have 'therapy' for that, yet things that may or may not have happened 40 years ago, I am supposed to need therapy for.
ReplyDeleteIn this case, they do not see the damage from taking away the 2 year old from his parents, yet they see the damage of the smoking. CPS can not be taken seriously as a group who cares about children until they recognize the damage of removal.
Thanks 6:24 AM
ReplyDeleteI am sorry that you must be subjected to this trauma counselling. Begin positively nevertheless. Something helpful may emerge. Yet your observation is profound that the gravity of your trauma of loss of child and the invasion of your world by outsiders is largely ignored or misunderstood. Let us know how it goes.