[Mister Bent]

Originally Posted by Jess

Oklahoma woman calls for parents who fail to notify police of missing child to be charged with felony; more than 37,000 supporters join in less than 24 hours.

More than 37,000 people in all 50 states have joined a Change.org campaign calling for a federal law -- called “Caylee’s Law” -- that would make the failure of a parent to notify law enforcement of a child’s disappearance a felony.

Originally Posted by Heart

A different perspective on "Caylee's Law:" I worked with a survivor of horrific intimate partner violence whose husband suffocated their 2-month old under a mattress and forced the mother to bury the child. Because they were poor immigrants the authorities didn't know or care about what was happening in this family. When the mother was finally able to flee the house in which she had been literally imprisoned and hop a bus to escape, she was so traumatized, she could barely speak. Eventually, with help, she alerted authorities who arrested her husband.

How do you think Casey's Law would affect this mother?

(And I hope no one thinks that prosecutors wouldn't use such a law against a poor battered immigrant victim of domestic violence -- because I can assure you they would. There are hundreds of such victims imprisoned all across the U.S. right now).

Heart

Heart, you raise an excellent point. While Caylee's Law only means that a parent could be charged, not convicted. Unfortunately, that means we have to trust the police and the justice system in the handling of those cases. Ideally, proper investigation would clear an abused or otherwise victimized parent. I think one thing that the Casey Anthony media circus underscores, and which has been discussed here, is the schism in our justice system when it comes to race. I can imagine a scenario where the mother you wrote about and Casey Anthony are both put in the situation of having to explain where their child is, or why their child is missing, and only one of them walking out of the police station.

The intent is good, however, toward an effort to keep children safe and making parents more accountable (because apparently some have forgotten that fundamental concept of parenting). My question is what's to be done for a child like Christian Choate, of whom the state seems to have lost track? Maybe that's a different thread topic, but it raises all sorts of questions for me, like what is the state's responsibility in a situation like his, in which Child Protective Services had been involved?