Most all CPS/juvenile court Systems deal ONLY with Intra familial Child Abuse

8. Most all CPS/juvenile court Systems deal ONLY with Intra familial Child Abuse. This schism between the way society deals with child abuse perpetrated by a family member versus child abuse perpetrated by an 'outsider' points out a staggering hypocrisy in the rhetoric about treating child abuse seriously. Behind the rhetoric is a child welfare and police system that in reality works hand in hand to let most child abusers walk free.

Many people are very surprised when they call CPS to report a child abuse case perpetrated by a neighbor, a priest, a stranger, or by any one outside the family. CPS tells the caller they don't handle these cases. They only respond to cases in which the perpetrator is a family member. So in most cases in which the perpetrator is not a family member, CPS tells the caller they'll need to report to police.

Another thing that may surprise you is that if you call police to report a case of child abuse perpetrated by a family member, police will often tell you should report the case to CPS. Granted police could take the report if they wanted to, and they should take the report. But police themselves are all too often on the same philosophical page as CPS. They too often believe that when fathers 'grow their own victim', the fathers shouldn't be held accountable like other offenders.

And another thing. Even if police do take a report of sexual abuse perpetrated by a family member, chances are very good that the perpetrator, even if convicted, will get off lightly compared to an outside-the-family perpetrator. California law, like the law in many states, maintains gaping legal loopholes where, prosecutors can, and frequently do, charge intra familial child sex abuse under different codes which allow the family offenders much lighter sentences. In addition, the law allows convicted intra familial child sex offenders to be given probation, different from outsider child sex offenders who must go to prison. And the law allows convicted intra familial child sex offenders to stay off the state's public registered sex offenders lists, also unlike 'outside'. (For a good discussion of the legal loopholes for fathers and other family members who sexually molest their children see Child Sexual Abuse and the State by Ruby Andrew athttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=904100)

There isn't a civic leader out there that doesn't publicly rage to the heavens about what monsters child molesters are, and how these 'animals' should be strung up at the crack of dawn. But, remember, the overwhelming majority of all child sex abuse is perpetrated by family members. What this means is that, in reality, we have a system that publicly beats its chest over the small percentage of child molesters who attack someone else's child, while by legal slight of hand that same system lets the vast majority of child molesters go free. Not by accident, but by legal and institutional design. What's perhaps most telling is that, at least in California, these legal loopholes for intra familial perpetrators have been widened over recent years, rather than tightened.

Or to put it another way, the more women and children have made demands on the system to stop family violence, the more the system has created ways to look good while paving the perpetrator's escape. The patriarchy with all its bluff and bluster to the contrary, still supports the notion that a man's home is his castle, and that his children are his to do with as he pleases. Unfortunately, CPS, with its hold-no-perpetrators-accountable system, is a vital part of the machinery for perpetuating these archaic and oppressive beliefs.