Last update - 00:00 29/07/2007
Less than 2% of parents tried for harming children are convicted
By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent
The rate of conviction for parents who caused the death or injury of their children through suspected negligence has been less than 1.5 percent during the last six years, a children's rights group said Sunday.
According to data released by the National Council for the Child, only three parents have been convicted for such offences over this period.
The group found that over this period the police opened 203 investigations into such crimes. A large number of the parents in these cases were never brought to trial, and a substantial proportion of those that were were acquitted.
This release of this information comes after a 7-month-old baby girl from Ramat Yishai died Thursday after her father left her in a sweltering car for 90 minutes.
The children's rights group claims the actual rate of conviction is even lower than 1.5 percent, as the police often never open investigations against suspected negligent parents.
In the United States, however, over the last decade (not including this year) for the 340 cases when parent's negligence led to the deaths of their children in a car, over 60 percent of those put on trial were convicted.
Police sources said recently that in many incidents, when parental neglect brings about the injury or death of children, police and state prosecutors are inclined to consider the parent's situation.
One source said: "In purely legal terms this is negligence, and a parent guilty of this needs to be put on trial. Parents who did not act maliciously but out of ignorance, however, have already been punished enough. You go and take a parent like this, whose world has been destroyed, and put him on trial."