CHILD_ABUSE_ISSUES
Moderator:  Rick Thoma
Origin:     FIDONET 1:271/124
Scope and Purpose:   The Child Abuse Issues conference is intended to
provide a forum for the open exchange of ideas and of opinions.  The
conference is open to parents, educators, legal and law enforcement
professionals, social workers, individuals involved in related fields
of research, advocacy and support groups, as well as other interested
individuals.  It is the sincere hope of the moderator that we shall all
draw benefit from the open and honest exchange of information.
While any reasonable individual would certainly agree that child abuse
and neglect are fundamentally wrong, the issues surrounding abuse and
neglect are often more complicated than they may appear.  Reasonable
efforts extended toward the detection or prevention of genuine cases of
abuse or neglect are laudable, yet some maintain the implementation of
programs designed to protect children have often been demonstrated to
lend themselves to administrative abuses.
Questions have recently arisen as to whether the models and methods
employed by those entrusted with the task of detecting or preventing
abuse are, in all instances, to be relied upon as accurate indicators.
Open and honest discussion of these issues, offered herein by way of
example, would be well within the scope of this conference.
Issues of more immediate concern to parents might be signs or symptoms
to look for, suggestive of abuse in instances of shared custody, or in
the school or daycare center.  How a parent may become better prepared
to distinguish between actual, imagined, or maliciously alleged abuse,
would also be included as among relevant topics for discussion.
[Standard conference rules deleted for brevity]
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