Another quite scary article is the paer delivered by GB. Melton in 2004 to the International Society for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.
The paper is replet with footnotes documenting everything and Melton skeweres Mandated Reporting Laws as having been well intended from the outset but now being a Policy without Reason.
And MElton repeatedly makes the point the unintended consequences of Mandated Reporting Laws have caused more damage to the children it is supposed to protect then good.
Interestingly Melton makes the point that while The orginal Mandated Reporting Laws were enacted to prevent “battery” the overwhlming amount of abuse that occurs is “neglect”.
Another point made by Melton is that two thirds of all “mandated reporting” cases are unable to be substantiated!
Here is but one paragraph from Meltons report.
“For now, though, it is important to recognize that experience has shown that the assumptions that
guided the enactment of mandated reporting laws were largely erroneous. To be clear, my intention
in drawing attention to these mistakes is not to criticize Kempe or any of the other pioneers in child
protection. Indeed, they are justly venerated for drawing public attention to an important social problem.
It is not reasonable to expect that any of the early advocates on behalf of maltreated children should
have known what professionals have learned from decades of research and clinical experience. Today,
however, leaders in child protection should know better. Nonetheless, in the United States and numerous
other jurisdictions that have copied the US model, policymakers maintain a child protection system that
is now known to lack a grounding in valid empirical assumptions and indeed to have terrible unintended
effects”.