A
female
age
51-59,
*ae1031
writes:If there is anybody out there in the legal profession, I would truly like to understand this. No, on second thought, I have no desire to understand this at all. Please tell me what I can do to fix this because it is sooooooo wrong! While I don't agree with everything in our criminal justice system, I have tried to a least hold on to the belief that even if decisions that are made don't make sense to me, there must be a good reason for them that I am just not aware of, but what I was just told I can not even begin to comprehend from any point of view. I am hoping that perhaps you can shed some light on this for me and hopefully even restore my faith in our system, a least a little bit. I was just up at the Royal Farms store and there was a woman in there screaming and cussing at her child who could not have been more then 2 or 3 years old. The child walked away and the woman walked over and grabbed this child by her arm and jerked her up so hard that her feet came up off of the floor. The woman continued to cuss at the child while she carried her back across the store by her arm. The child’s feet where still not touching the ground. The woman then slammed the child down hard and the only reason why the child did not fall to the ground was because the woman was still holding the child's wrist. I looked at the child's arm and there where red marks all over it. The woman then gabbed her bag and drug the child out of the store, still cussing at her. When the woman noticed me staring at her she turned and cussed at me too. I walked up to the counter and asked the girl at the register if they had surveillance cameras and the girl said yes. I told her what I had witnessed and I said I was going home to call the police before that woman hurt that child any more. The girl said she had seen it too and was glad that I was calling the police because "somebody needed to." About 20 minutes after I called the police, the officer that "investigated" my complaint called me back. I told him what I had seen and heard and he said that it was "bad parenting skills" but not child abuse. I felt that I was not explaining myself right since I know if I walked up to another adult, grabbed their arm hard enough to leave marks and drug them across the floor not only would I go to jail, but I would also be sued. I then asked the officer if he had seen the surveillance tape thinking nobody would argue with that -it was proof. The office would not answer me on weather or not he had taken the time to even look at the tape. He just told me that in the state of MD a parent has every right to pick a child up by their arm, cuss at them, leave marks on them and drag them around. I can not comprehend this. Why? How? Is nobody looking out for the rights of this child? Are the police going to come on the 6:00 news and say there is just no way they could have foreseen it if this child should turn up dead from "bad parenting skills"? Did the officer even look at the tape or was he just being lazy? I honestly just don't understand this and I am so worried about this little girl. Her eyes where almost begging for help.
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female
reader, Rae1031 +, writes (10 October 2009):
Rae1031 is verified as being by the original poster of the questionThank you both for responding to me. I am a single mother and I have "snapped" on my children out of stress too, but I have never gotten past the point where I have perhaps yelled at them when there was no need to. I know that does not make me right and the other mother wrong. I have gotten the look of death from other parents that are perhaps more well adjusted then me and that is usually all it takes for me to realize that I am not being fair to take things out on my kids just because they are nagging me while I am having a bad day. I hope and prey that she was just having a bad day and I was in no way suggesting that somebody should come and take the child away from her. I just feel that if I had done the same exact thing to that women that she did to her child, the police would have considered it a crime - bruises and broken bones or not. They would have reviewed those tapes and at least made an attempt to find me and investigate what had happened. All I wanted for that little girl was for somebody to at least try and make sure that she was OK. I did not wait 3 days to call the police, I called right away so they could have at least attempted to look into this. She may be a little person, but she is still a person and her life, safety and well being is just as important as anybody elses therefore, she deserves the same effort.
A
female
reader, DrPsych  +, writes (4 October 2009):
 I am not a legal professional, but I do have considerable experience of child protection work and the way the system works. If the police have not helped, contact Child Protection Services (social services) in your area and report what you have seen. The threshold for an incident to be judged as 'child abuse' varies from region to region, but physical acts such as you describe on an infant require further investigation at least. It may be the case that the parent is not a bad person here; it could be that there are all sorts of underlying issues that cause her to behave this way such as mental illness, lack of social support etc. She maybe known to CPS already if she behaves this way in public and the shop can assist social workers in making further enquiries into her identity.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (4 October 2009): I don't know that I can be of any help, but I certainly understand your distress and I commend you for not standing by and doing nothing, you contacted the police.
Trouble is, does any one even know how to identify this woman, her name, her address, etc?
If not there isn't much that they could have done. Child protective services will not even get involved in my state unless there have been numerous complaints. I don't know that what that mother did was considered legal child abuse as no real physical harm was done, no broken bones or major burieses. Of course what she did was very bad parenting skills with a toddler that was too young to understand anything except the physical and mental torture.
Obviously this mother was very stressed and had anger management problems and needed some help. I guess you could have shouted at her as such and even though she wouldn't like it, who knows if it happened more than once she might get a clue.
I know we have a pretty shakey system for protecting the rights of children but we can't go hauling children away from their parents either, so it can be a difficult thing to determine without an investigation being done. You might try child protective services to see if a case worker would be able to look at the tapes, but then the identity of the woman is an issue.
You can only hope that your actions will go out into the universe and protect that little child in the future, you gave her mother the look of horror her behavior warranted, I am sure it wasn't lost on her totally.
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