Anti-smacking law 'not to blame'

A big increase in reported assaults on children in the past two years is unlikely to be due to the "anti-smacking" law, a new report says.

A review of changes to section 59 of the Crimes Act that removed the defence of reasonable force for parents or guardians who hit their children was made public yesterday.

In the report, Social Development Ministry chief executive Peter Hughes said he could find no evidence that parents were subject to "unnecessary state intervention" for occasionally lightly smacking their children.

The report says there has been a significant rise in the reporting and prosecution of violent crime, including within families.

Police files show that just three reports of smacking were passed to police in the past three months, down from eight in the previous six months and nine in the six months before that.

Thirty-nine reports of smacking have been recorded since the law change in 2007 and 189 cases of minor physical discipline. Reports of other forms of physical discipline were down from 39 early this year to 10.

The number of police prosecutions for smacking remains at one, and there have been 14 cases of minor physical discipline resulting in prosecution.

There has been a big rise in the number of reports and convictions for assault on a child under 14 years. The number of recorded complaints of assault rose 69 per cent between 2006 and 2008, from 845 to 1429, and the number of convictions rose 64 per cent, from 158 to 259.

There has also been a big rise in notifications to Child, Youth and Family for suspected cases of child abuse – up from 71,927 to 110,797 between 2006 and last year.

Substantiated cases of abuse were up from 2274 to 2855 over the same period, but Mr Hughes said that did not mean more people were being dobbed in for smacking since most of the increase had been referrals from police.

The ministry was at a loss to know why the rise had happened, but it was probably because of greater community awareness and intolerance of serious violence against children, and a more rigorous approach to family violence by police, Mr Hughes said.

He denied his department had been involved in persecuting parents for smacking. "There is no evidence that CYF is unnecessarily intruding into family life in response to allegations of light smacking."

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett said she thought the review went some way to comforting parents that the law was being interpreted in the way it was intended.

Former MP Larry Baldock, who spearheaded this year's anti-smacking referendum, said he was not comforted by the report.

He said the big increase in CYF notifications from police showed officers had been wasting their time checking parents.

- © Fairfax NZ News