Child Abuse Reporting in the Media
I feel like I should apologize for the lack of posting recently. Not much has been going on here since our judge is on vacation. As much as I complain about his decisions, he is a nice guy (deep down) and it is certainly more interesting to work here when he is on the bench and I can be in court. At the very least, it gives me material for my blog.I'm always on the lookout for child abuse/neglect stories that reach the mainstream media. Two parents were arrested yesterday after they left their children home alone while they went on vacation.
Police: Calif. couple leaves kids home alone
Children's father, his wife get a dog-sitter but leave boys without care
The article is a great demonstration of the way the mainstream media usually reports child abuse and neglect. In short, I beleive that it is misleading and irresponsible.
Updated: 8:20 a.m. ET Jan. 5, 2006
MANTECA, Calif. - A married couple who got a dog sitter for their puppies but left the man’s young children home alone while they vacationed in Las Vegas were arrested Wednesday, police said.
Well, the fact that they got a dog sitter is hardly relevant to the neglect. The reporter is simply looking for an interesting "angle" for the story. In abuse and neglect stories, that "angle" is usually a demonization of the parents. More on this particular "angle" later.
Jacob Calero, 39, and Michelle De La Vega, 32, were taken into custody as they arrived home on a flight to Oakland. They had left town Friday to celebrate the new year, authorities said.
2006 is off to a bad start for them.
The couple apparently told 9-year-old Joshua to look after his 5-year-brother, Jason, who is autistic. The children spent one night alone before police found them.
The fact that the 5-year-old is autistic is admittedly relevant here. The fact that he has special needs makes this worse.
'These kids are helpless,' grandmother says
The grandmother, Libbey Holden, said she called police because she had suspected the couple left the children at home in San Ramon, about 35 miles east of San Francisco.
“I had big concerns,” Holden said. “These kids are helpless.”
Joshua said his father and stepmother got each other puppies for Christmas, which they brought to De La Vega’s mother to care for before leaving town.
“I thought they loved them more than us,” Joshua told The Associated Press during an interview at his maternal grandmother’s apartment. The children’s mother died in 2003.
Come on! Are you kidding me? The 9-year-old really said that? That quote is just a little too perfect.
The converse of demonizing the parents is building sympathy for the victim. First, they give you that heart-breaking line. Then, just in case you weren't feeling enough sympathy for the poor child and his autistic brother, they throw in the line about their mother being dead.
He added that he and his brother ate cereal for breakfast and cooked frozen dinners in the microwave.
See, this is why they didn't leave the puppies home alone. The puppies can not get their own cereal and frozen dinners. Not to mention that the kids are probably toilet trained and the puppies are not. I'm not trying to be funny here, I'm trying to explain the rationale behind the "interesting angle" that the reporter is using. The reporter is trying to make it sound like the parents have more concern for the puppies than they do for their children. The real reason is that the children are more capable of functioning on their own.
It's not because they love the puppies more than you, Joshua.
“I didn’t know who I could call in an emergency. Even if I called my father, he’s far away, so there wouldn’t be much he could do,”
Calero and De La Vega each were being held on suspicion of two felony counts each of child endangerment. Bail was set at $200,000.Kids found in OK shape
Police found the children asleep in their beds Saturday night. A gas fireplace was on, but they found nothing out of the ordinary.
Here we go. Finally. Two-thirds of the way into the story, the reporter finally tells you that no harm came to the kids. I repeat, THE KIDS WERE NOT HARMED. The reason this is buried down here is because no one would read a story about unharmed kids. Again, the reporter is just trying to make the story more interesting.
“It appears that the food and the environment were set up for them to be alone,” San Ramon Police Sgt. Brian Kalinowski said.
Ok, so this shows planning and intent. But it also shows that the parents had some concern for the kids well-being.
Officers began calling Calero’s cell phone Saturday, but he didn’t call back until Tuesday. “We get the sense that they felt no urgency for them to return home,” Kalinowski said.I would love to hear that voice mail message:
"Hello, this is Officer Kalinowski of the Manteca Police Department. Would you please come home so we can arrest you for child endangerment?"
Calero and De La Vega have requested lawyers and have refused to talk to police, Kalinowski said. Felony child endangerment carries a maximum sentence of six years in prison.
Well, of course. That's what guilty people do. They hire lawyers and refuse to cooperate with the police. This is just old hat for them. Way to make the parents look like hardened criminals!
Calero is a plumber and De La Vega works in a dental office, police said.
Rule of Child Abuse Journalism #8: If you must humanize the parents, only do it a little and do it at the very end of the article.
Ok, I'm not saying that what the parents did was not wrong. Clearly, if these facts prove to be true, they have neglected, maybe even endangered, their children. However, there is also an element of irresponsibility in mainstream news reporting of child abuse and neglect.
This case is not a typical "home alone" case. The parents we defend in child protection court don't usually go on vacation and leave the kids home. They are people with debilitating drug addictions that have rendered them incapable of caring for children whether they're physically there or not.
They are poor people who have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. These people don't have money for child care, nor do they have employers who are understanding of parents who miss shifts to care for their children. Unlike the parents in the news story, most of the parents we represent don't have a support network of family and friends to help them with child care emergencies.
That's the danger of this type of news reporting. If this is the only type of story that you show people, the public will start to think that this is the archetype of child neglect. It is not. The archetypical neglectful parent is much more complex than the caricature presented in this article. She is less financially able, less malicious, and far more sympathetic.
This type of article is the reason that people cringe when I tell them I am a public defender, then cringe even more when they find out I represent parents accused of abuse and neglect.
I'm not saying that this article is inaccurate, but it does have an agenda. It clearly places shock value and moral outrage above presenting a balanced, engaging, nuanced story. In that way, it is more like a tabloid story than a mainstream news story. The sad thing is that this type of article is typical of major newspapers, television news, and internet news sites.
posted by Public Defense @ 1/05/2006
6 Comments:
Thank you for your insight. This is the first report I have seen that looks at the facts, period.
Any other grandmother would have gone and picked up the kids. She must have thought this was the fast track to adoption.
Why hasn't the media hasn't asked this question? Oh yeh! They already picked sides...
About the dogsitter, and no sitter for the kids that doesn't make sense.
Anyone who is humane enough to look for a dogsitter will look for sitter for kids.
I think the grandma is their sitter but she is just trying to make the couple's life miserable.
You have to remember, she is the ex-mother-in-law of Jacob. I think she hates Jacob,the hint to her disappointment and anger is whenever she mentions her deceased "poor" daughter and Jacob remarrying.
But what I don't understand is why did she use the kids as pawns to get even with the couple?
The previous comments made me listen to what Liberata Holden has to say.
I think she has some sort of grudge against Jacob Calero and Michelle de la Vega.
None of her actions speak kindness or love. Calling the police after ten hours of talking to her grandson is not exactly what a kind grandma would do. Just drive there for 30 mins after one second of finding from your grandson he is home alone.
I just don't know what her deeper agenda for what she did.
Good points, but after subtracting details, the bottom line is that the parents left the children home alone for 5 days. The left a 10 year old to care for his 5 year old brother.
On a side note, they are not poor. He is a foreman, and she owns the dental office.
You're absolutely right. What the parents in this story did was wrong, but so is this type of reporting. My point is that the mainstream media often chooses atypical and sensational such as these instead of reporting on the more typical, less flashy child abuse scenario. The danger being, that people reading this may come to beleive that this is a profile of the typical child abuse scenario.
Perhaps my language was clumsy, but I meant to say that the typical parent in a child abuse case is poor, not the parents in this story. I was trying to contrast the subjects of the story with what would have been a more representative family.
Are you serious? These poor people working multiple jobs had enough money to go on a vacation AND to pay for a dog sitter but not enough for the kids?? Here's a simple solution -- don't go on vacation! Nevermind what the grandma's motivation was! Thank God somebody was there for the kids. Parents demonized? You betcha, common sense would tell you not to leave an autistic child at home with a 9-year-old child. These two individuals were fortunate not to have been arrested for something more serious than child endangerment. Had the grandmother not called, something worse could have happened as time went on -- they could have been arrested for child endangerment resulting in the death of a child. I would seriously question these people's judgement in being responsible for the custody of any living thing (except for maybe puppies) ....
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