Paedophiles convicted of serious sexual offences could lose parental rights over their children under a new law.
The proposed law change comes after the BBC reported the case of a mother who spent £30,000 in legal fees to stop her paedophile ex-husband getting access to their daughter.
After hearing the story, Labour MP Harriet Harman tabled an amendment to upcoming legislation.
It covers the most serious sexual offence - rape of a child under 13.
Speaking to BBC News, Ms Harman said paedophiles who were guilty of that crime in the future would be “automatically deprived” of their parental rights.
Waiwaiwait… We weren’t already doing this?
Even though I understand it, I find it disturbing that such a heinous crime as rape can then have additional depts of depravity.
I don’t know if I think it’s needed to put the bar for removal of parental rights at a sublevel of rape… “just rape” (what?! See how horrible this is) should be enough to remove parental rights. But I might be missing something…
The problem with schemes like this is that they imagine a world where the now orphaned kid gets adopted into a loving Hallmark movie home. The reality is that they will end up in foster care where the abuse and neglect will continue, just at the hands of strangers. Or mom will shack up with the next abuser and the dad will have no ability to intervene. Better to leave them with their biological parent who, while a complete scumbag, at least has genetic similarity to hopefully check their worst excesses.
TL;DR - fix the social safety net instead of dumb feel good laws like this one.
If the biological parent is a confirmed child abuser, getting them to foster care is a lottery where the two potential results are ending up with another child abuser or with literally anyone better than that.
But that isn’t even the only option. The very case referenced by the article is that of a mother trying to block her pederast ex-husband from being able to meet their abused child.
My sister used to foster. The reality is usually closer to what the person you responded to said.
