Introduction The given paper will address the 218th legislature of the State of New Jersey of Assembly no. 850, which upgrades the penalty for failing to report the act of sexual abuse against children. It states that if a person fails to report child abuse is disorderly and guilty of the fourth crime. It is evident that the harshness and severity of punishment in the State of New Jersey for failing to report are much higher than in other states. The given legislature puts individuals and professionals who work with children and take full or partial care of them vulnerable to being a part of the child abuse incident. The main change is the fact that failing to report is now considered to be the fourth crime. Rationale The main reason for selecting the given legislation is the fact that it has a direct impact on health care workers who work with children. The problem of child abuse has now become the subject of active discussion in society and the direction of multiple initiatives by the state designed to significantly improve the situation with regard to children. At the same time, it is regrettable to note that cases of child abuse are still not uncommon, and the problem itself is still far from being resolved. The issue of cruelty in relation to children can be attributed to one of the complex ones. When posing the problem of brutality as a subject of research, several difficulties are immediately revealed. Two significant aspects of these difficulties can be identified (Davidov, Sigad, Lev-Wiesel, & Eisikovits, 2017). Firstly, the scientific interpretation of the concept conflicts with its common understanding. Society, parents, adults interacting with children demonstrate a high degree of tolerance to violence and cruelty. This conclusion is based on the results of a study of the individual characteristics of parent-child relationships. In support of the thesis, it should be noted that upbringing in various families is prohibitive and compulsory. From the perspective of adolescents, restrictive measures, moral pressure exerted on them by parents, and verbal censure are common educational methods. Estimates of parents on this issue differ significantly at times lower than those of adolescents. This is especially noticeable in assessments of physical punishments; their presence in educational practice was noted by 37% of adolescents and 4% of parents, and neglect of a child, adolescents – 31.2%, parents – 5.6%. Moreover, estimates of the frequency of verbal censure were very close: adolescents – 78.8%, parents – 64.2% (Babakhanlou & Beattie, 2019). Thus, one can note the desire of parents to disguise the presence of physical punishment in the educational process, the desire to demonstrate the socially approved characteristics of the family educational environment and the image of the right parent, since it is known that cruelty and physical punishment as a social phenomenon are condemned by society. Discussion In society, the concept of “cruel attitude” is defined through the prism of physical influences. In the minds of most parents, child abuse is just the use of physical punishment. Such a narrow interpretation of cruelty fixes other non-physical forms of violence as a kind of social norm and makes it difficult to level it. Such types of parental