Yet, despite the faddish classification of child abuse as evil incarnate, physical abuses of children are actively organized, funded, directed and supported in both public and private sectors, in schools and on playgrounds.
The abuses cloak themselves as "athletics, sports, physical education, youth recreation," etc. The abuses are "games" involving sanctioned violent contact between "players."
Even the so-called "rules" allow for such outrageous behaviors.
Parents are hauled into court these days for spanking children with enough force to cause bruises and abrasions. But paid and volunteer coaches, referees and other adults actively oversee "sports" activities that routinely contribute to the lame and halt during practices and contests.
Parents would be hanged by their thumbs for encouraging their children to hit and kick each other, to run full tilt into each other, to fling hard objects at each other and to throw each other to the ground or floor.
But society remains free to organize, fund, direct and support those same insanities in allegedly sanitized forms of boxing, football, rugby, hockey, lacrosse, wrestling and other mindless "games" for children of all ages.
In most cases, taxpayers have been conned into picking up the tab. Or frequently forced to pay the astronomical differences between the inadequate insurance limits and what juries believe were reasonable sums to support the paralyzed, maimed or crippled children for the rest of their vegetated lives.
Don't cough up any escapist blather about tightened "rules," new "protective" equipment, revised "techniques," preserving the "rites of passage." Or dismiss criticism of such "sports" as unAmerican, wimpish, gutless.
Basketball, soccer, baseball, volleyball, gymnastics, track and field and scores of other individual and team sports manage quite nicely, thank you, with common-sense rules that prohibit--rather than encourage or require--violence.
When children die (and many do) as modern clones of Roman gladiators, the deadly circumstances are always called "accidents." Nonsense. Their deaths clearly are cases of negligent manslaughter.
Harebrained jocks at age 18 or older have the right to risk their own lives in violent "games." But children legally can't make that choice. That choice must be made by harebrained parents.
Taxpayers and advocates for children can stop the mindless pain and slaughter by refusing to pay for or permit violent youth "sports" on public property. Better yet, they can outlaw child involvement in "athletic contests" that sanction or encourage violent contact between participants.
At the very least, they can refuse en masse to involve their own children and make violent youth "sports" as socially unacceptable as smoking in public places.(14 MARCH 99)
