Thursday, June 24, 2010
CHILDREN are being left in families where they are being tortured and physically abused because the state’s ability to intervene is restricted by the Constitution, according to a child law expert.
Solicitor Catherine Ghent said children whose parents are married are "discriminated against" and "placed at greater risk" under the Constitution as the state can only move in where there is "an immediate and fundamental threat" to the child.
She was speaking at the publication of an opinion poll which showed almost two thirds of adults surveyed said they would vote in favour of a new referendum on children’s rights.
An Oireachtas committee recommended last February that a referendum should be held to enshrine the rights of children in the Constitution, but no date has been set by the Government.
Senior counsel Mary Ellen Ring said this failure to set a date was a "continuing denial of rights to children and a slap in the face to the community", which had clearly indicated in the poll that it wanted these rights put into the Constitution.
The poll was commissioned by Saving Childhood, representing nine children’s rights groups.
The poll found:
* 62% said they would vote in favour of a referendum.
* 37% did not know how they would vote.
* 29% were aware of the intended referendum.
Ms Ghent said the current constitutional situation can have a "very negative" impact on children.
"It’s not an exaggeration to say parents have tortured their children; they have been beaten so badly that they break limbs," she said, and then they are being sent home to their abusers.
Children can be so badly injured they require stitches. "Parents have held children over fires until their hair singed and they are sent home; children are generally terrorised by parents and they are sent home; a four-year-old child sent to care for the ninth time and still sent home. That’s the reality."
She said children of married parents are discriminated against. "The test for intervention in a married family is there must be an immediate and fundamental threat to the capacity of the child to operate as a human person.
"There are exceptional circumstances in exceptional families, where children can be left in a very dangerous situation and the state’s ability to intervene is curtailed by the Constitution."
Ms Ring said the focus should be on the 37% who didn’t know how they would vote. She said they needed to be reassured that what was being proposed was not "radical" and did not mean families would be "torn asunder".
She said the Oireachtas committee had done all the work, including proposed wordings, and the Government just had to set a date.
Fergus Finlay of Surviving Children called on the Government to set a date.
© Examiner Publications (Cork) Limited, City Quarter, Lapps Quay, Cork. Registered in Ireland: 73385.