cover image The Hostage Child

The Hostage Child

Leora N. Rosen. Indiana University Press, $32.95 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-253-33045-1

Since the premise of this book is the Dr. Elizabeth Morgan case, that history-making event might have been exploited. Instead, the authors, co-founders of Operation Z, a child advocacy group, have gathered information on 206 cases and focus on five representative examples that illustrate what they see an an increasing anti-mother bias in the courts. These five cases of the failure to safeguard children are the most effective parts of the book: Mary H. took her children into hiding; when she died there after failing to have her cancer treated, her abused daughter was forcibly returned to the father. In Karen Carter's case, although independent doctors returned a verdict that there was a ""reasonable medical certainty"" of ""non-accidental genital injury"" to her daughter Jesse (as well as substantial other proof), the child was returned to her father, while Carter was deemed ""not to be trusted"" because she might possibly kidnap her daughter. Whatever may have happened in the past, the authors make a well-researched, convincing (if partisan) case that the pendulum has now swung the other way. Now many lawyers, child advocates, psychologists and judges accept a ""crazy mother"" or ""vindictive ex-"" syndrome, thus allowing real perpetrators to continue abuse with no supervision. Culdoscopic exams, which can prove rape in children as young as one week, are thrown aside. In these cases, judges acquiesce to a paternalistic myth of the American family and in so doing, ignore the reality of American children. (Sept.)