California Passes 'Pedophile Protection Act'
Under present California law, all persons who regularly come in contact with children as part of their jobs are required to report any instance where there is reason to believe that a child has been molested or abused. The new bill would eliminate mandatory reporting for anyone working as a volunteer in any capacity.
The bill would also eliminate mandatory reporting in cases where children are having sex with each other, and would eliminate "severe emotional abuse" as a reportable event.
The bill was introduced and promoted in the legislature by Sen. Sheila Keuhl, who is openly a lesbian.
Opponents of the bill believe that it was motivated by an investigation that revealed that Planned Parenthood has been contacted by more than 30,000 children in California -- some of them as young as six years old with sexually transmitted diseases -- but has never reported a single instance of abuse to law enforcement.
"This is a reprehensible act by Sheila Keuhl," said Richard D. Ackerman, Vice-President of Legal Affairs for the Pro-Family Law Center in Southern California, "The one common denominator among civilized persons is the ability to rally around the protection of our children. Even one case of unreported abuse has the potential to begin a generational cycle of continuing abuse, and could even result in the death of a child."
Opponents of SB1313 are contacting Gov. Schwarzenegger and encouraging him not to sign the bill into law.
See also:
Bill Dubbed 'Pedophile Protection Act'
Comments
Pedophiles are people too. They should have the same rights and resourses to help protect them. If a child concents it shouldn’t be considered abuse anyway. Have you ever stopped to think that maybe some children do want to have sex?
I don’t really like the way this announcement is written. I’d call it dripping with bias. Being openly a lesbian is completely irrelevant, and homosexual discrimination to mention it, I believe.
This act is not being passed to ‘protect pedophiles’. Currently, having laws forcing VOLUNTEERS to mandatorally report things, is completely ridiculous. It is right to repeal it. That is too much responsibility to put in a volunteer’s hands.
These laws do not outlaw reporting child abuse. They outlaw necessitating it. As in there is no ‘Good Samaritan’ law. People are still free to report it.
Furthermore, naming it ‘pedophile protection’ is completely inaccurate. Not all pedophiles abuse children, and not all child abusers are pedophiles. This act is also in reference to ALL abuse, and not just evidence of sexual abuses. It mentions physical and emotioanl abuse. Meaning that it would also ‘protect’ (if you must) abusive parents. But actually it doesn’t, it leaves it up to a caregiver’s discretion to choose what they think is notable evidence and what they think is not, and doesn’t punish people for not mentioning what they think there may have been another explanation for.
Eliminating severe emotional abuse as a reportable event sounds kind of strange, but I guess since caregivers (especially volunteers) are not trained to diagnose this, there might be cause to this. Overall, it is probably to reduce overreporting which strains the justice system’s resources so that they can focus on more serious cases.
I don’t see why it is necessary to report when minors have sex with one another, I think that should be left up to a person’s discretion too, honestly. Why should people be prosecuted just for giving someone their privacy? It is not their responsibility! If they weren’t there, it would have happened anyway. Not reporting it doesn’t mean they’re encouraging it, or that they’re even allowing it to continue, or not addressing it in their own way.
Planned Parenthood is doing a great service by providing counselling where none exists. The aim of forcing them to report is to strip them of their trustworthiness and cripple them as a safe place for hurt people in need to go, reprehensible.
the last two posters sound like leftist NAMBLA members who left their brains in the commode the last time they sat on the john
Why no comments on this for four years?
The article sounds biased, and seems like it came from some other source. Several sites reported the same thing in slightly different words around the same time. By the way, this law was signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger.
I think having laws which mandate the reporting of any suspicion of abuse is not necessarily a good thing, especially for volunteers. It puts people in the awkward position of having to figure out whether something they see represents abuse or not, even though they are not qualified to determine that. When potential abuse is reported, it can make life a living hell for those people responsible for the child, even if no abuse ever took place. Also, if you report abuse, you could become a suspect yourself. It also gives far too much power to the government, which has become our “nanny state”, watching out for “the children.”
It’s becoming dangerous to be near children anymore because of an overbearing pervasive state, a society that worships children, and the resulting pedo hysteria, our modern witch hunt.
Melissa says:
Pedophiles are people too. They should have the same rights and resourses to help protect them. If a child concents it shouldn’t be considered abuse anyway. Have you ever stopped to think that maybe some children do want to have sex?
Melissa, Pedophiles like you should be used as target practice by the mob.