Court Opinion

ID: 9754499
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:02:40.6998+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:54.164362
License: Public Domain

WIEAND, Judge,
concurring:
Although I join the majority’s decision to affirm, it may not be amiss to suggest that the holding of the majority’s decision must be confined to a great extent to its own facts. The facts in this case are disturbing. They suggest that Julia Cardwell knew that her minor daughter had twice been impregnated by her stepfather, Julia’s husband, and that the child had been sexually abused by her stepfather repeatedly over a period of at least four years. Nevertheless, Julia failed to take any significant steps to protect her child from continued abuse. Although Julia’s real choices in view of her not unreasonable fear of her husband were limited and difficult—she could report her husband to the authorities, she could take her daughter and leave the marital home, or she could send her daughter away—she unquestionably endangered her daughter’s welfare by doing nothing to prevent the child’s continued abuse at the hands of the child’s stepfather.
It does not follow from the holding in this case that a parent will be made a criminal merely because he or she has been unsuccessful in preventing the abuse of a child by the *50parent's spouse. The criminal law should not be allowed to reach out in response to public outcry against child abuse and criminalize a parent who in good faith has attempted but has failed to confront successfully the terrible dilemma of being required to live in a family relationship with both an abused child and the abuser.