Family Vioelence and Abuse

There were several decisions made by the Supreme Court that formalized courts for juveniles, making them more like criminal courts. Formal hearings were required, juveniles who faced confinement were given the right to receive a notice of the charges being held against them, and also came along the right to be represented by an attorney. In the 1980’s the public noticed that juvenile crimes were rising and that the system was not effective. Soon states began implementing disciplinary laws, some which included a mandatory sentencing and automatically being sent to adult court for certain crimes committed.

“Abuse is still seriously under reported. I was told by leading British social worker that when they hold training courses for employees, they find that a third of the females and slightly less of the males come forward to talk about their childhood experiences of being abused. Over ninety percent of parents as some time hit their children – and some people hit them several times a week – so there is a great deal of emotional hurt, fear and physical pain in the world today” (Davis 251). For this reason alone it makes perfect sense why violent crime rates are so frighteningly high.

Domestic violence is a crime that occurs regularly within the United States. It claims millions of victims each year. There is not a specific cause to establish why domestic violence occurs. However, it has been documented that domestic violence is a product of physical, emotional, sexual, psychological, and any other forms of torture or torment that the particular abuser wishes to employ to gain control or power over their victims (Gosselin, 2005). Due to the complexity of this crime, many criminologists and socialologists have studied its causes and the effects in order to determine social policies and additional theories to better understand the causation of domestic violence. The social policies and theories that are developed from

One hundred years ago, the Illinois legislature enacted the Illinois Juvenile Court Act (1899 Ill. Laws 132 et seq.), creating the first separate juvenile court. The policy debates raging around the country in this centennial year(1899), however, make it uncertain whether the traditional juvenile court will prevail. Early in the 19th century, juveniles were tried along with adults in criminal courts. In common law, children under

The article constructs domestic violence as an issue of gender, race and socioeconomic status. Women are identified as the “majority” of victims (Taylor 2014). Consequently, the article conceptually represents domestic violence as events of intimate terrorism where one partner violently terrorizes the other partner to gain complete control over the relationship, which is entirely perpetrated by men (Johnson 2012). With that said, Johnson (2012) points out that majority of domestic violence is situational couple violence, where both the man and the

Juvenile courts were established by each state. However, there was a need for federal action to go beyond the responsibilities of the fledgling juvenile courts in order to better the lot of children across the country. The early part of the 20th century was a time when children of all races still worked under inhumane conditions in mines, mills and factories (U.S. Department of Labor, 2016). The mills and factories were often little better than sweatshops and children were paid mere pennies a day for their labor (Foote, 1976). Recognizing this, Congress passed a law, and President William Howard Taft signed it, establishing the Children’s Bureau as a new federal organization in 1912.

Myers, John E.B. "A Short History of Child Protection in America." N.p., n.d. Web. 15

It is true that Lucy Flower didn’t act alone in working to bring about a court for children. Nor was she the only woman who was concerned about poor and delinquent children. But teaming up with Julia Lathrop, a social worker in Chicago, the two women were a formidable team, together developing a vision of a court for children and then attaining the necessary political clout to ensure that a bill was passed by the Illinois legislature to create a juvenile court.

In the early nineteenth century juveniles were treated the same as adults when it came to the legal system. We did not have separate courts or jails for juveniles and they would often receive the same punishments as adults that had committed crimes. “At the beginning of the

In the United States, the history of child protective services are divided into three eras; before organized child protection, creation and growth of organized child protection, and government-sponsored child protection services. The first time that child protection was organized was in 1875 by the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (Myers, p. 449). Before 1875, children did not have the protection that is practiced today and the intervention to protect children was uncommon. Prior to 1875, prosecution was not the only solution to child protection. Massachusetts in the early 1640s had laws that gave courts the right to remove children from parents who did not teach their children properly. Also Massachusetts passed a

The first era that Myers examines is when child protection was not organized or even thought of as a profession. Though no laws or organizations were in place for children that were being abused, Myers gives examples of situations that occurred when criminals were prosecuted for abuse. Prosecution was not the only option for individuals who abused children; Massachusetts established a law for authorities to remove children from parents

The rising viewpoint of the child savers was that of parens patriae which said that the state had an assenting duty to get involved and care for the less fortunate kids. In 1899, the first court devoted to hearing cases with juvenile delinquents was developed by the Illinois Legislature. The procedures in the juvenile court were much different from those of the criminal courts. The child would be accused of a crime they committed, but they were offered help, treatment, and direction (Myers, 2008). Juvenile hearings were held in private and the juvenile’s records were kept sealed to avoid the disgrace of a criminal conviction. Since the juvenile courts rejected punishment, they were allowed to have jurisdiction on things adult courts did not consider crimes. These offenses could be anything including truancy, disobedience, bad language, immorality, and vagrancy. Under parens patriae, the juvenile court was allowed to use wide range discretion to resolve the troubles of juvenile offenders and rejected the official procedures of the adult

Underreported and underestimated, domestic abuse rips families apart every single day. Domestic violence comes in mainly five different forms, physical, sexual, psychological, emotional, and economic. This violence ruins families, demoralizes the victims, and the public downplays the household terrorism that goes on every day. Generally thought of as taboo, the public belittles and humorizes domestic abuse as a way to deal with it, that avoidance must come to an end.

They used informal interviews with victims of domestic abuse and also the people who worked with and helped victims to show how families can often be a violent group and to show the male domination within households as well as demonstrating to the public the “hidden” problem.

The article highlights a paradoxical statistic of sexual violence and domestic abuse in the country over the last years. The exponentially increased number of such reported incidents of abuse, sheds light on the social and emotional factors that might have been the reason for such changes. Among those several factors, the influence of the infamous movie Fifty shades of grey has on its audiences wide spread around the world, is arguable. Fifty shades of grey, an erotic romantic drama film by Sam Taylor Johnson based on a novel by the British author E.L James was an immediate box office success, breaking numerous box office records. Thus, this movie created a current popular culture of eroticism and played a role in defining domestic abuse.