Parents who deliberately starve children of love face jail under new Cinderella Law

[FarCenter]

Parents who starve their children of love and affection face prosecution under a “Cinderella Law”, The Telegraph can disclose.

Changes to the child neglect laws will make “emotional cruelty” a crime for the first time, alongside physical or sexual abuse.

The Government will introduce the change in the Queen’s Speech in early June to enforce the protection of children’s emotional, social and behavioural well-being.

Parents found guilty under the law change could face up to 10 years in prison, the maximum term in child neglect cases.
The change will update existing laws in England and Wales which only allow an adult responsible for a child to be prosecuted if they have deliberately assaulted, abandoned or exposed a child to suffering or injury to their health.

The new offence would make it a crime to do anything that deliberately harmed a child’s “physical intellectual, emotional, social or behavioural development”.

This could include deliberately ignoring a child, or not showing them any love, over prolonged periods, damaging a child’s emotional development.

Other new offences could include forcing a child to witness domestic violence, making a child a scape goat or forcing degrading punishments upon them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/10732982/Parents-who-starve-children-of-love-face-jail.html

[bluestateguy]

1. Sounds like kind of a hard law to enforce

nt

[Live and Learn]

2. Exactly. nt

[FarCenter]

4. Given the inherent conflict between parents and children, it's hard to see how it will work.

[HereSince1628]

5. Seems like putting pages into the book that will later be thrown at some neglectful parents

or caregivers.

Developmental failures are attributed to a range of psychological disorders. Parental neglect and abuse/ dysfunctional family environments are often considered contributing factors in problems of child psychological development. Which is only to say, arguments for justification of this can be made.

But I agree. No one is likely to be going around policing all parent-child relationships. Seems more likely the law will be brought to bear by prosecutors in circumstances where other events/evidence has drawn attention.

[In_The_Wind]

3. Good luck with that.

[Jgarrick]

6. Got that right. nt