SOUTH CAROLINA
Salisbury Post
In the movie “Spotlight,” journalists from the Boston Globe start out investigating sexual abuse reports involving a priest. The reporters come across a victim’s advocate who urges them to keep digging, using these words:
“If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse them.”
In other words, when people know about abuse and fail to report it, they are complicit in the crime. They allow it to go on.
Likewise, it takes a village to stop child abuse — as it did recently in the case of a local infant. …
North Carolina law requires all adults who believe a child has been abused to report those suspicions to authorities. You don’t have to have proof. If you have reasonable cause to suspect abuse, you are compelled to report it, and you don’t need anyone’s permission to do so. Contact the Department of Social Services in the county where the child lives and share any information you have.
The law requiring people to report suspected abuse is essential to the protection of children in North Carolina. Abusers tend to dominate family members and isolate them from others. If you suspect abuse, you could be that child’s only lifeline. In 2013, some 25 children in the state did not get help in time; they died at the hands of a parent or caregiver. It would be better to take a chance and report abuse you might be wrong about than to wait and find out you were right all along.
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