Down Geeklawyer, down boy…not an excuse for a weak pun about the size of Ruthie’s bottom, but rather a comment on the successful prosecution by the RSPCA of David and Derek Benton for causing unnecessary suffering to their 11 and a half stone Labrador, Rusty, by overfeeding.
Having already incurred the editorial wrath of Geeklawyer this month by agitating Christians, Ruthie is deliberately avoiding the attention of the Animal Liberation Front by specifically not commenting on whether overfeeding constitutes animal cruelty.
Her interest in the case instead relates to the development of the law. Surely if overfeeding your dog constitutes a criminal offence, what about overfeeding your child?
Section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 (with the now slightly dated heading “Prevention of cruelty and exposure to moral and physical danger”) states:
1. Cruelty to persons under sixteen. (1) If any person who has attained the age of 16 years and has responsibility for any child or young person under that age, wilfully assaults, ill-treats, neglects, abandons, or exposes him, or causes or procures him to be assaulted, ill-treated, neglected, abandoned or exposed, in a manner likely to cause him unnecessary suffering to health (including injury to or loss of sight, or hearing, or limb, or organ of the body, and any mental derangement), that person shall be guilty of a misdemeanour.
(Offences under 1(1) are not offences of strict liability thus a deliberate or reckless act or failure needs to be proved. A genuine lack of appreciation through stupidity, ignorance or or personal inadequacy will be a good defence. The offence is not to be judged by the objective test of what the reasonable parent would have done. R v Sheppard [1981] AC 394, [1980] 3 All ER 899, 72 Cr App Rep 82])
So could the parent of an obese or even overweight child now be prosecuted for neglect? The damaging effects of obesity on health are well known. Surely the threshold for cruelty to children cannot now be lower that that for dogs?
(2) For the purposes of this section–
(a) a parent of other person legally liable to maintain a child or young person..shall be deemed to have neglected him in a manner likely to cause injury to his health if he has failed to provide adequate food.…for him.
No doubt when this Act was written “adequate” was assumed to be interpreted as “sufficient”. (The problem in 1933 being starving children, not fat ones). However, given the current drive to improve the standards of childrens diets, could “adequate” be interpreted as “nutritionally balanced”?
I fear that the Ely Justices, in allowing this case to proceed and convicting, perhaps failed to consider the wider implications of their decision. (Ruthie has no idea what percentage of children are currently deemed to be either overweight or obese, but having spent this afternoon people watching whilst collecting money for charity, she suspects it’s in double figures.)
Surely the threshold for cruelty to children cannot now be lower that that for dogs?
Would it be a cliche to repeat the old saw that the English are fonder of their dogs than their children?
Yes. Frightening isn’t it. Maybe the attraction is that dogs provide unconditional love and don’t answer back, so we can assume they think and feel anything we want them to. It’s not like they’re going to contradict. They therefore become psychological extensions of ourselves which is why we love them so much