Pray instead of report possible risk to a child?

In what capacity was her relationship to the child? If she was a teacher or a medical professional she's required by law to report it. I would remind her of that.

Why in the hell was she calling anyway if she didn't want to report it?

Possibly tell her that perhaps God guided her to call you? You're right, it's the same as any other person who would call in and be hesitant to give information. Call her out on using God as an excuse for not standing up for the child, if you have to. That's shameful.

Have the religious women arrested for refusing to help protect the child. She knows about abuse and she doesn't report it to the right agencies.

Because "She is afraid of the mother finding out and getting mad at her" = "I don't care about the child"

(make that "she doesn't care about the child" - didn't mean you, earthbound misfit)

xpost

since I didn't get the caller's personal information

This is usually an anonymous situation to encourage people to make reports.

Also, as someone who has had to make these calls, let me say it is a very difficult and scary thing to do no matter what you know or how much you care about the child.

Why in the hell was she calling anyway if she didn't want to report it?

Exactly what I'd like to know - that was really annoying me. And it was the grandmother of the adoptive mom-to-be's other kid.

Possibly tell her that perhaps God guided her to call you?

Thanks mh, I will most likely try that tactic next time this issue comes up. It's hard for me as a non-Christian to know what would be an appropriate way to respond to people in this situation without just making them mad and LESS likely to cooperate.

How would you have felt if she had just chickened out without mentioning praying? That seems like it would happen every now and then?

Possibly tell her that perhaps God guided her to call you?

As someone who does have quite a bit of experience with dealing with religious people, this is the way forward.

Punnishing someone for making that call is never going to help. To the religious person, praying is one of the biggest ways that you *can* help. It's not a cop-out at all, and you will be insulting her if you imply that it is. The woman wants to help, but she is frightened.

Tell her that God has guided her to call you, tell her that it is God who has inspired her conscience to call in the first place, and that God will give her the strength to carry through with it.

I wish my mum were here, she'd quote chapter and verse for inspiration of things that would encourage her. But that's her job.

Hehe StanM, I'm also a she, but I knew you weren't talking about me ;) Here we can't have people arrested for not reporting child abuse, and since she wasn't a professional reporter I doubt the police would be able to arrest her anyway.

Ms. Misery, I am just as annoyed about people chickening out without mentioning praying, but religious reasons are about the only ones I am completely stumped on how to handle. And I do understand being afraid to call and report abuse or neglect - I'm very nice to my callers and establish a good rapport with them, even the ones I want to strangle. I have only "lost it" with one or two people in 2 and a half years and even then I wasn't that rude to them.

Confront her with the possibility that perhaps her God is using HER as an instrument to answer the CHILD'S prayers, and see if she can still square her conscience with that.

xpost - Yeah, kinda what Kate said.

And I do understand being afraid to call and report abuse or neglect - I'm very nice to my callers and establish a good rapport with them, even the ones I want to strangle.

Yes I'm sure you are. I was saying that more to other people here just to give a bit of understanding to the woman's waffling.

Masonic and elmo, thanks more good perspectives on how to handle the situation without being insensitive to someone's belief system. My statement about it being akin to doing nothing is more my perspective on the matter and not something I would never even hint at with someone who is struggling to make the right decision.

You could also encourage such a caller to discuss this with her pastor/priest. That person would be probably make a call or encourage her to do so.

Tell her this joke:

A man hears a radio message urging that residents take to higher ground due to an imminent flood; he ignores the message saying, "God will provide." After the waters rise past the first floor of the man's house, a neighbor happens by in a rowboat, pleading with the man to join him. The man waves him off saying, "God will provide." As the tide swells to cover the man's house, he stands on his roof and is soon visited by a rescue helicopter. Naturally, the man refuses rescue, continuing with his mantra: "God will provide." The man is then swept away by the raging torrent, drowned by the floodwaters that pour into his open mouth as he screams, "God will provide!" Once safely in heaven, the man says to God, "Hey God - I trusted you, man. I believed you would provide. What happened?" God indignantly replies, "What happened?! I provided you with a radio message, a rowboat, and a helicopter! What the hell kind of provision do you need?!"

lol Nubbel - I like that joke, but I think I'll pass on that approach with my callers ;)

Our neighbours abused their children (not sexually, but physically and mentally). We reported this to a friend (who was, at the time, a policeman, he's now retired). He said that if my dad made a second report, then there'd be some serious investigation. My father thought long and hard about it, contemplating the neg/positive results of said report. At the time I was a kid and figured life's simple: there's good and bad, you fight the latter and defend the former. But my dad explaind that it wasn't that easy. If he reported the incident then the kids would be taken away. Would he do this now that the kids were already in their (early) teens? In his mind the damage had already been done. He knew how badly a kid is affected about abuse as he had been abused as well. He figured keeping the family togetehr was better than tearing them apart.

It's semi-apropos of nothing, I guess, but his explanation made me realize that he is right up to some point. It isn't always so easy.

Also, child abuse is the worst crime of all. :-( It saddens me so so so much when I hear of these cases. Now that I'm a mother, I find it even harder to stomach. :-(

What's the saying? "Pray, but row for shore."

Also, even though I am atheist, I can understand her point (up to... uh a point). She wishes that things will sort themselves out, I guess. But it doesn't work that way sadly. That's what I would say: There's no such thing an interventionist God, *she* has to make the decision and report this.

It is sad that I hear so often that people don't want to report abuse or neglect because they think the kids are going to be taken away. I can't speak for other states, but CPS in Texas doesn't just permanently remove kids from the home even if there is confirmed abuse or neglect. Their primary goal is to try to make the home environment one in which the children can be safe. It is only when they can't that they resort to taking the children away from the parents. I guess I can't say it works the way it supposed to in every case due to the fact that there's no way to guarantee that individual caseworkers are all going to do their jobs right but I wish more people would give the system a chance to advocate for children who are being harmed by those who are supposed to be protecting them.

have we talked about the neumann case here? dumbass religious parents whose daughter, kara, died of diabetic ketoacidosis because they refused to get her medical care, opting instead to simply pray for her recovery. i'm sort of doing a presentation on this and every new detail i learn i want to fucking kill these parents, so unbelievably sad

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/us/08sentence.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=dale%20neumann&st=cse
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/04/relying_on_prayer_instead_of_medicine_pa.php
http://news.aol.com/article/praying-parents-get-jail-time-in-death/599327

the second link there especially is angering and a great otm article

that's so horribly sad, and i'm not sure if it's because of some kind of evil motivation (fear, laziness, etc.) or just plain wrong belief. if it's the second i don't even know if it makes more sense to be angry at them or just dumbfounded and sorry for them. i mean, if you thought your kid was diabetic but she was under spiritual attack and you didn't know because you didn't believe in demons, and then she died because you didn't pray and exorcise her or whatever, you'd be wrong, but not evil. and without your child.

right which is why it's good that they were tried and convicted (though they got off relatively easy, unfortunately) - it's important to establish legal precedent for this kind of neglect and hopefully work through this country's backwards wrist-slapping when it comes to medical neglect of children on religious grounds

wrist slapping stance

when I worked psych we would occasionally meet patients whose families had tried prayer/cult-y stuff for ages & ages before some good neighbor'd finally call the cops and say "I think they're keeping somebody prisoner next door or something." poor crazy people needing medication gone completely feral until they'd get brought in on a hold. in a couple of days they'd be completely back on earth and you'd think, God damn it you ignorant people, believe what you want but let God or whatever work through the pathways that are demonstrably effective, ok?

yeah the judge had a good line in the sentencing

"God probably works through other people," Howard told the parents, "some of them doctors."

It's an extreme symptom of a larger problem, I believe, which is the tendency for people and even churches to make God out to be Santa Claus. You'd think someone would point out at some point that having a relationship with God does not mean that he's your rich uncle. It means living with the idea of transcendence in mind, and it requires a sense of awe and even -- perish the thought! -- humility.

What the fuck is wrong with religion as a concept that this can ever happen.

i don't know. a really high number of the christians i know, and honestly, the christians who helped inspire me to convert, are scientists and med students BECAUSE they think it's one of the ways they can fulfill God's will. it is just so foreign to me to think of medicine and religion as opposed instead of linked systems.

God wants these people suggest banned...he's telling me through ad images...

http://scienceblogs.com/promos/sb-giveaway_physorg_166x250.gif

"it is just so foreign to me to think of medicine and religion as opposed instead of linked systems."

However this is what happens when you have a vocal religious right crudely pushing a puritanical agenda by attacking science and medicine, see birth control, evolution, climate change, stem cell research and even to some extent abortion.

The association is there where ever you look, science and medicine is evil.

Its not a recent phenomenon of the modern religious right. Faith-healing extends back beyond Yeshua ben Yosef of Nazareth, though the revival movements of mid-19th century rural America certainly brought it back into favor.

The central problem is the belief that a collection Iron age II temple propaganda and apocalyptic cult writings has a superior claim on truth than the vast body of modern observation. This wasn't as much of a problem before the biblical canon was translated to the vernacular and the narrowly educated gained literacy: past priestly castes, rabbinical commenters, and ecclesiastic hierarchies always knew the texts were poetic, filled with puns, and widely metaphorical. All that is missed for those who come to them as the first book, the only book, before a grounding in other literature. Alas, the same Reformation that made modernity possible brings its opposite along in its wake.