Student Making Threats Against My Daughter

calla1
Fri, 21 Sep 2012 19:27:55 +0000

SodiumFree and jym626: thanks for the discussion

You’re right, Sodium that I was combining child abuse laws and physical violence and elder abuse laws in my post. In trying to make it simple, I caused more confusion - sorry! You are correct that the 24 hour time limit is on child abuse reports only. Regarding situations of threats of physical violence between adults, you are also correct that there must be a serious threat against a reasonably identifiable victim. The notification of the threat can come from the patient (Tarasoff decision) OR the patient’s family (Ewing decision 2004). The actual decision to report is often muddled, as you so rightly point out, jym626. And a patient saying “I wanted to KILL him!” is not enough, in itself, to trigger a warning. The context must be examined. Thanks for all your clarifications, jym626.

In the case of a child abuse report, any suspicion that it may have happened is enough to trigger a report. Often the mandated reporter has never met the person being reported (and may never have met the alleged victim, as the report of abuse may come from a third party), so has no way of verifying the truth at all.

The point of my post, really, was to draw a parallel in response to all the discussion about what this young man’s motives are. We really have no way of knowing, and it is not our job (or the job of the OP) to figure it out. A report is not the same as an accusation. Her job as mom is to make a report along the proper channels, and let other authorities figure it out.