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Emerging ideals of restorative justice and alternative mechanisms of victim-offender mediation brought forward in the last decades, offer new legal methods and public mechanisms for treating traumatic events. These methods focus on direct encounters between perpetrators and victims, and claim to substitute or complement the traditional administration of justice through trial and formal punishment. The paper examines the strength and limitation of such encounters as represented in two films, which focus on victim's 'private' initiatives to face their offenders. One of them is Festen a Dogma film by Thomas Winterberg, where a severe case of child abuse is exposed within a familial celebration, providing a drama of initial denial and concluding transformation of the bourgeoisie order. The second is The Son, by the brothers Dardenne, where a father confronts the murderer of his child and becomes his mentor. In both films the victims act as neutral observers mediating the drama and at the same time they operate as involved and biased actors, unable to control their temper and nearly causing crisis. The analysis of the films emphasizes themes as: The prominent role of law in the domain of the subject in mediation; The 'private legislation' as a tool to overcome trauma; The equivalence between alternative methods of dispute resolution and alternative film making, as rebelling against 'modern' institutions, coming back to direct encounters between individuals in a multiple framework of identity construction; The strength of the non neutral position for victims in mediating traumatic events; The tension between repression and blaming in handling traumatic events. The paper suggests that conflict management studies should continue to address the notion of trauma, aspiring both to overcome and reconstruct it, and mostly prevent its severe manifestations through the adoption of an appropriate 'traumatic' epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconsiders many of the core commitments in family law by examining those commitments through the lens of positive psychology. By studying the conditions that lead to human flourishing, positivepsychology has gathered a wealth of empirical and qualitative studies demonstrating that a host of desirable outcomes, from personal fulfillment to civic engagement, rely upon the quality of interpersonal relationships.This paper draws upon this research to develop twin themes of rupture and repair, arguing that family law can do far more to support families proactively and also help repair families that have been ruptured by divorce or child abuse and neglect. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many modern-day commentators believe that the criminal prosecution of child sexual assault is a relatively recent phenomenon. A review of cases across Canada from 1900 to1975 indicates that children as young as 3, 4 and 5 years of age regularly disclosed sexual abuse, and found themselves in front of judges and juries. Those who study sexual assault will not be startled to learn that so many of our most vulnerable were intrusively violated. What is more unexpected is how many children publicly disclosed the abuse, how many adults initially believed them, and how many prosecutions ensued in these early decades. This paper will examine one trial that occurred in Hull, Quebec in 1951, where five year old Marie Tremblay accused her mother's live-in paramour, Ovila Soulière, of sexual abuse. It will focus on the barriers that faced child witnesses, the presumptions of unreliability that attached to their testimony, and the nature of the research that purportedly justified such conclusions. It will critique the writings of historically eminent English and American jurists, treatise writers, and psychiatrists such as Hale, Wigmore, and Freud, as well as the Canadian-born Barbeau, who falsified sources and drew conclusions well beyond their evidence to condemn child testimony without any reliable basis for doing so. The paper will speak specifically to discrimination based on gender and age. It will also argue that we must understand the historical framework as we attempt to move forward into an egalitarian 21st century on issues such as child sexual abuse. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The successful London bid for the 2012 Olympics has provided increased momentum for Government policy to support and develop a sporting culture that encourages widespread participation in recreational sport, particularly amongst the young. There are however longstanding concerns about the safety of children, and the ability of the Governing Bodies to provide an effective regime that both prevents, and detects, abuse. Abuse of children is not limited to the most highly publicized examples of sexual abuse but also covers physical abuse, emotional abuse and neglect.This paper will look at regulatory frameworks protecting children within the context of sport. It will concentrate on specific sports and identify policies adopted and any problems with implementation. In particular, it will analyse an under-researched area of abuse; the 'overplaying' of sport. As well as looking at policies of governing bodies and their implementation, this study will include analysis of role of child protection officers, education programmes, role of coaches etc. The paper will address the question as to whether voluntary bodies are capable of providing sufficient protection for children or whether a legal regime of child protection law should be extended specifically to sport. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares influences of children's ombudspersons on child maltreatment levels in the fifty states. It has two components. The first component compares levels of child maltreatment in states having offices of children's ombudspersons with states without these offices. The second component compares levels of child maltreatment for children's ombudspersons possessing characteristics believed to empower children's ombudspersons to prevent perpetration of children maltreatment with children's ombudspersons without these characteristics. These characteristics are independence from public and private authorities and possession of legal powers to investigate, litigate, and lobby. It will measure other possible factors that may influence the effect children's ombudspersons have on child maltreatment levels. This paper employs ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and Qualitative Comparative Analysis. QCA is an innovative analytic technique based on Boolean algebra useful for studying a moderate number of cases. Using OLS regression and QCA, this paper will assess heterogeneity and context to examine various configurations of legal, political, economic, and demographic traits that characterize states that have lower levels of child maltreatment compared to states with higher levels. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Responsibility of Strangers : Liability of Society, the State and Private Bodies for Child Abuse. In his essay the Kindness of Strangers, Michael Ignatieff explores a paradox of the welfare state, that by making the State or society responsible for our fellow citizen's welfare, we have somehow decreased our own sense of personal responsibility for our fellows' welfare. Traditional common law notions have compounded this process of differentiating obligation from responsibility by treating welfare obligations of Government as giving rise to something less than a legally enforceable claim. Behind child abuse litigation against the State, and private bodies that look after children are changing notions of responsibility for not just those who care for children and but for society in general in the provision of services for children. Litigators have sought and partially succeeded in enforcing obligations to protect children on the State, society or even private bodies. These obligations had previously been considered more aspirational than legally enforceable. For those abused this finding of responsibility may lead to compensation and the ability to formally confront those institutions that have failed them. But the finding of responsibility may also be leading us to a new way of viewing the welfare state and the role of courts in requiring the Government and the society behind it to live up to the aspirations of the welfare state. This paper looks at the implications of the child abuse litigation, or other dispute resolution processes, for a changing view of the responsibility of the State and Society. It also looks at the mechanisms be they public or private that are used to deliver social services. It will ask whether Courts in grafting on private law obligations on to the State, and imposing public obligations on to private bodies ( when the services are delivered by private bodies) are engaged in some even more complex task of creating hybrid public-private obligations. It will contrast in this regard tort liability with the possibilities of human rights and administrative review proceedings. It will also look at the possible impact of such liability on the way welfare services are designed in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laws mandating the civil commitment of sex offenders have been enacted in a majority of states - most often with strong public support. Proponents of the laws argued for their necessity based on research studies done with small groups of compulsive pedophiles. In practice, the men who are committed under these statutes include persons convicted of a wide range of offenses, who now face indefinite confinement. Studies done in the late 1980s and 1990s, after the moral panic about the abuse of children in day care centers, found that roughly one in three girls and one in six boys experience sexual abuse before the age of eighteen. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that civilly confined sex offenders are not prisoners, thus the Eighth Amendment protections are not available to them. The legal processes used in civil commitment and the conditions in which these men live are the subject of litigation in many states. The study of the scope of sexual abuse of minor children by Roman Catholic clerics is the first-ever analysis of a universe of allegations by victims of sexual abuse in a specific domain. The results of this study, public in late February 2004, provide a unique lens through which to evaluate the legal justifications for the civil commitment of sex offenders. The author of this paper is a long-time advocate for prisoners through the Prisoners Self Help Legal Clinic at Seton Hall Law School as well the Data Analyst for the Catholic Bishops' Study now being carried out at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen an increase in the criminal penalties associated with possession of child pornography. This paper assesses the theoretical and policy problems raised by these new, harsher penalties. The arguments in favor of the increased penalties revolve, in most instances, around the harms of child sex abuse; yet the connection between possession of child pornography and physical abuse is far from direct. Indeed, to the extent that significant criminal justice resources are expended in the prosecution of child pornography possession, it may inappropriately signal to the public that child sex abuse is somehow "under control." Possession of pornography prosecutions may be more attractive to law enforcement because they do not raise the evidentiary difficulties associated with child testimony of physical abuse, they are not limited by the international origins of much of the available child pornography images, nor do they expose the personal relationships between victims and offenders that underlie most physical sex abuse cases or cases of child pornography creation. But there is a danger that possession prosecutions will be seen as an alternative to prosecutions of those who directly abuse children, and that an assumption will be made that a particular possessor is or will be directly responsible for physical abuse. There is oft-identified harm that is unique to the possession of child pornography namely the humiliation a victim suffers each time someone views the images; however, this harm does not appear to provide sufficient justification for the increased penalties associated with possession. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents one aspect of the legal treatment of parents accused of severe crimes against their children - the level of the language and discourse involved in the legal proceedings and criminal trials. There are twelve cases involving public legal proceedings that are examined, seven of which are also analyzed in-depth through the examinations of the complete trial transcripts.Five aspects of the legal processes and their contexts are isolated and analyzed in this paper:1. Expanding Criminal Justice Control. 2. The "Target" Population. 3. "Middle Class" Standards and Practices - Lower Class Defendants.4. A Right to Assist in Own Defense.5. The Mysteries of Forensics.The data presented suggests that there are violations of the spirit of legal processes that often occur in the criminal justice system when crimes against children are prosecuted. These trespasses, connected to the social and economic class of the offenders, are poorly justified by the otherwise immensely compelling objective of child-protection. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academics and policymakers are increasingly calling for the state to address the root causes of child abuse and neglect, namely poverty. But a persistent critique has emerged from feminists and others about state control of families. This paper proposes a new theory of family-state relations that would both undergird the normative call for increased state aid and also answer the concern about a loss of familial autonomy. This new theory, which I call collaborative capacity building, argues that the state should provide tangible assistance to families not out of a legal obligation, but rather because doing so would serve the state's goal of building capacity among its citizens. Importantly, the state would collaborate with families in this capacity building endeavor, recognizing the unique expertise of families in determining their own needs and making decisions concerning their children. This approach would provide a compelling rationale for state aid and help answer the trenchant concern that increased state aid necessarily entails increased state control of families. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, Ruth Jones explores the extra-judicial resolution of sex crimes against children. In the current sexual abuse scandal, the church hierarchy primarily received allegations of abuse from parents and adult survivors. In her presentation, Jones will analyze the normative response of parents and adult survivors to seek resolution of child abuse cases outside of the secular agencies charged with investigating sex crimes against children. In examining why parents and victims initially turned to the church, Jones will contrast criminal justice punishment objectives with the religious goal of redemption to identify how and when other institutions can assist victims of abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the last twenty years, seven states have enrolled foster children in HIV drug trials for drugs not even proven to be safe and effective in adults. The use of these vulnerable children was clearly inequitable because some foster children were never tested for HIV and the numbers of HIV positive children in foster care was negligible compared to the population HIV children not in foster care. The studies targeted impoverished African-American and Hispanic foster children who were wards of the state or without a guardian and were not allowed an opportunity to refuse participation. This is an example of racial discrimination. Even though the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) cited seventeen institutions for violating the law for targeting vulnerable minority foster children, OHRP did not put an end to the trials or sanction any institution. OHRP should impose sanctions on all the health care providers participating in these unethical clinical trials, including substantial fines, loss of professional license, and bar from receipt of federal funding. If OHRP fails to put an end to racial discrimination in the selection of research subjects, foster children advocates should use international law to pressure the United States. The International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) prohibits the U.S. from sponsoring racial discrimination. Unless some enforcement measures are implemented and enforced, no process or theory will bring truth to the statement contained in human rights documents that everyone deserves human dignity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A critical review of Supreme Court of Canada decisions since 1999 concerning tort liability of public and private authorities for physical and sexual abuse of children displaced from their families and communities by the state into institutional care reveals three disturbing features: privileged disregard for the role or centrality of structural inequalities in enabling such abuse and in compromising legal recognition of and redress for its profound harms; privileged disinterest in three decades of multidisciplinary scholarship explicating the relationships between systemic inequality and sexual abuse and between systemic inequality and unequal protection of the law; and the conceptual and doctrinal closing of privileged ranks against plaintiffs' claims. In the result, a jurisprudence of and for the empowered locates systemic abuse beyond the range of the deterrent and compensatory reach of tort law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]