Editorial: Child abuse is everyone's business

The stories have been so heart-rending as to drive a nation to despair. Revulsion can be the only emotion when abuse is directed at those who bestow love and trust without question. Children's very innocence leaves them vulnerable, and their immaturity leaves them defenceless. There is never a shortage of people willing to take action to stop abuse if it is perpetrated on a family pet. Yet when children suffer, there has been the saddest of silences. Until now. The recent episodes of appalling abuse of Maori children cannot be ignored.

As keen as the shock is the bewilderment. How could a race which traditionally cherished its young now abuse them at three times the rate of European New Zealanders? There is, of course, no simple answer, just as there is no easy way to break a cycle of battered children battering their own offspring.

It is too easy to label this as solely a Maori problem and to ascribe that racial group's overrepresentation in abuse statistics to more of them living in poverty. Or to find a more fundamental cause in the disintegration of family life and looser moral standards. The reasons, and the answers, lie within a complex tapestry of social, cultural and economic factors.

Some elements of the tapestry have, however, become apparent as repugnance has overwhelmed reticence. What has been described as a de facto tapu has long prevented Maori exposing child abuse. Families have tended to close ranks rather than lay bare the failings of a whanau member. Similarly, the whanau influence, and sadly misplaced pride, may have stopped many Maori taking advantage of social agencies and voluntary counselling services.

The value of whanau, and the ideal of protection through shared care, has suffered as each case of abuse has been reported. If the principle of keeping children within the extended whanau is to be upheld, Maori must examine what elements of the whanau are, in fact, fit and capable of filling that role. Likewise, social agencies must carefully assess the potential for danger before deciding that a child will be best cared for by its natural family. When the rights of parents are measured against the protection of a child, the welfare of the child must be paramount.

A number of Maori agencies already point the way to breaking the cycle of abuse. Huntly's Waahi Whaanui Trust, for example, recognises the vital need to reach people before they resort to violence. It sends tutors out to teach parents activities to do with their children.

Inviting new parents to visit a social service is not enough. Those who most need it will often not make the effort. The trust's tutors are also a monitoring device, much like that formerly provided by Plunket or public health nurses. Plunket and other agencies, including iwi health trusts, are now restricted to just eight "contacts" with each child. It can hardly be coincidental that in Sweden, where babies are visited at home at least 16 times in their first year, child abuse is low.

The Government must be the main catalyst for change. Only it can bring together the agencies and individuals who collectively will identify and instigate remedies. Most immediately, however, action is needed to try to prevent repeats of the recent horrific incidents. The police should be instructed to give child abuse a far higher priority. That may require forming a special unit which, as well as investigating cases of abuse, could vet the suitability of family surroundings.

Most fundamentally, however, child abuse is everyone's business. In the first instance, parents must start taking responsibility. Nothing, whether poverty or other family circumstance, excuses beating children. Equally, a community despairing of recent incidents of abuse should no longer tolerate the suffering. It should be as though a spell has been broken. Society as a whole - and be in no doubt that child abuse can be found across its ranks - must bring the problem into the light.