Youth domestic violence rising
August 28, 2006
THE
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CLEVELAND - Parents, judges and
educators are concerned about the number of juveniles charged with
domestic violence in Cuyahoga County, which has doubled in the past
decade.
The county, which includes Cleveland,
has seen the number of teens charged with domestic violence go from
504 in 1996 to 977 last year, and some wonder whether many more
cases aren’t being reported.
More kids sit in detention for
abusing a household member than for robbery, assault or drug
dealing.
Some experts say parents have become
more willing to report their children as abusers. Others say
authorities are more apt to prosecute teens, rather than send them
to counseling.
Whatever the explanation, most
experts say adolescent-to-parent abuse remains underreported.
Researchers place the instances of
children abusing parents — physically, mentally or emotionally — as
high as 18 percent in two-parent homes and 30 percent in
single-parent homes.
Jerome Price, of the Michigan Family
Therapy Institute, attributes the problem to a power shift between
parents and children.
“It started in the 1960s when people
began to view children as people with rights,” Price said. “They
should have rights, but we went too far and gave them equal rights.”
Complicating the issue, he said, is
that corporal punishment fell out of favor, but nothing replaced it
as a tool for parents to control their children.
Along with the imbalance of power
came an acceptance of “bad” teenage behavior, said Bethel University
researcher Nancy Eckstein. Parents often view these cases “as a
temper tantrum gone awry” and hope their teens will “grow out of
it.”
These parents frequently start with
rules and guidelines, Eckstein said, “but they get tired and worn
down” and eventually give up.
Juvenile public defender Salvatore
Amata, whose office every year represents hundreds of juveniles
charged with domestic violence, said experts might be overthinking
the problem. Kids are often arrested, he said, because it’s the
simplest solution for police, even though most fights are “mutual
combat.” It’s against the law for kids to hit their parents, but
it’s not against the law for parents to hit their kids, Amata said.
Amata doesn’t think society should be
saddled with the blame. The parents he meets on the job often aren’t
ideal.
“They are often overworked,
overwhelmed and don’t spend much time with their kids,” or have
themselves been abused or battered in front of their children. “So
when they — parents — try and exert themselves, they get this
reaction,” Amata said.
Juvenile prosecutor Carmen Naso
agrees that the reasons behind the violence may be more personal
than societal.
In the past, many of these kids were
labeled unruly and sent to counseling. But these days if a kid hits
a parent, he won’t get a break, Naso said.
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