Suggestions that child protection laws should be separate from the criminal justice system are often met with trepidation as the understanding is that child abuse should not be a criminal offence. This is not the intention. However there are aspects of child abuse which require that the law can be used to protect a child without relying on conviction of an offender. These include the problems associated with reporting of abuse and with gaining convictions in the criminal system which necessarily requires high standards of proof and strict adherence to the rules of evidence.
All countries have problems with the levels of reporting of abuse, some more than others.
One of the factors relevant to the level of reporting will be the level of awareness within a community and another will be the perceived consequences for both the child and the family. Lawyers with whom we have spoken have articulated the problems faced in systems which require that abuse is only reported by family members, always to the police and where the priority is seen to be conviction of the offender rather than protection of the child. If a family member is concerned about reporting suspected abuse by another family member then that concern may be increased by the knowledge that the child will be required to give evidence in criminal proceedings with all the public trauma which this may entail and that the abuser may face years in prison or even capital punishment. If insufficient evidence exists the case may not even get to court and the child will remain unprotected, perhaps in even more danger. Too often the decision whether or not to even proceed to gather evidence in a case will lie with individual police officers who are bringing their own value judgements to the issue.