Re: admitting abuse

[FrampD@xxxxxxx]

Folks --
The debate over whether a parent must acknowledge responsibility for child
maltreatment is not a new one.  It rages in my jurisdiction as well as most
with which I am familiar.  Here, however, the child protection community is
virtually united behind the concept that the parent must acknowledge
responsibility for the abuse and must clarify that abuse with the child before
visitation or contact can be re-established.  This is not a "denial of due
process;" rather, therapeutic denial reduction work and eventual clarification
counselling is far more effective in reducing risk than litigation.  Our
position is that we will try to remove all legal impediments to therapeutic
acknowledgement in the early stages of intervention, and force the issue in
Court if necessary.  A parent can always stand by his or her "rights" to deny
the abuse, but the clear therapeutic position here is that that denial places
the children at continued risk:  in other words, parents who do not
acknowledge that their behavior harmed their children have no internal
incentive to change that behavior, and the tools for child protection must be
imposed rather than learned.

Frampton Durban, Jr.
Chief Legal Counsel
Charleston County DSS
Charleston, SC