Big News: July 26, 2006
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In two television interviews with Swedish human rights campaigner Ruby
Harrold-Claesson,
Green MP Sue Bradford has claimed that child abuse causing death in Sweden is
about one child every four years, and one a month in New Zealand. She claims
that these statistics are one reason why we should ban smacking.
Harrold-Claesson disagrees. She has said that between 1965-1999 285 kids died
at the hands of their Swedish caregivers. That's seven per year.
Bradford never said that reported child abuse in Sweden since the 1979 smacking
ban has increased up to 500 percent In one Swedish police district
alone, 145 confirmed cases of caregiver abuse occured from 1986-1996.
Yet Canadian Psychologist Joan Durrant, who visited this country in Feburary
said child abuse in Sweden was virtually zero. She didnt want anyone to know that
one child had been murdered in Sweden at the hands of caregivers the previous
month, in addition to one murdered that same month.
Time for some fact-checking.
In January one little disabled boy was beaten to death in Sweden.
"Bobby's" mother and her partner were jailed for 10 years last month for beating the
boy.Another man is currently in custody in Stockholm for murdering his stepdaugher last month. Another parent admitted murdering her son in February
Another boy died at the hands of his
adopted parents earlier
this year. He was four, and social workers failed in their duty to stop the abuse.
Because of all the child abuse in Sweden, its government is setting up a special commission to investigate cases where children
die in violent circumstances.
Sweden's public health Minister, Morgan Johansson, has said,
Every year, eight to ten, sometimes as many as
twelve children die in Sweden due to violence. This has been true for several
years.
Sue Bradford wants to ban smacking in New Zealand to minimise child abuse. Yet
Sweden's Child Ombudsman Lena Nyberg said this recently.
We are getting more and more signals that
children are being subjected to physical punishment, and we also know that the
number of reported incidents of child abuse is increasing.
So, why use Sweden as an example of how well a ban on smacking is working?
Denmark banned smacking in 1997.Perhaps they could use Denmark as an example of
how a smacking ban could get rid of child abuse - except that child abuse rose after the ban.
update In 1994 Joan Durrant wanted to find out how much smacking had
decreased after the 1979 ban. She did a survey for Save the Children, and
unfortunately for her, it found that corporal punishment of teenagers was just
as bad after the 1979 ban as in prior generations and that, overall, corporal
punishment had decreased very little. So they decided not to publish it. I wonder why?