Are parents responsible for the disappearances of their children?

The UN Convention on Children’s Rights adopted in 1989 obliges the states to take all possible measures in order to fight kidnappings and disappearances of children. This document also makes parents primarily responsible for providing the conditions necessary for the child’s development as well as his security. Today, on the International Missing Children Memory Day, RAPSI analyzes the legislation of different countries on the responsibility of parents for the disappearance of children.

Legislative practice of the countries of the world on the responsibility of parents for the disappearance of children varies immensely. In certain countries the parents may get punished for leaving the child unattended even for 10 minutes, and most countries, including Russia, fix neither administrative nor criminal responsibility for the parents whose children have gone missing.

Russia: parents are not guilty of their child’s disappearance

The Russian Penal Code contains no specific Article qualifying the parents’ actions or inaction for the disappearance of their children. Only the kidnappers are punishable – Article 126 of the CCRF stipulates for them imprisonment of up to 12 years.

Meanwhile the Russian mothers and fathers may be punished for the failure to fulfil their obligation of educating an underage child (Article 156 of the CCRF, up to three years of imprisonment).

<…> A high-ranking officer of the Criminal Investigation Department reminded RAPSI of the famous case, which happened in Bryansk. Parents of the 9-months old Anya Shkaptsova reported her disappearance to the police. They were not brought to responsibility for leaving the girl unattended.

After three weeks of searches produced no results, the investigation declared that the kidnapping had been invented by the parents, and the girl had been beaten to death by her stepfather. A criminal case for murder (part 2 of Article 105, up to life sentence) was initiated against the parents. The girl’s mother and her cohabitant have already confessed.

The Russian legislation also fixes, as a measure to influence the parents, limitation or deprivation of rights to educate children, but this is no responsibility for their disappearance.

The law stipulates that people may be unparented for committing a premeditated crime against their children or for cruel treatment of them – including physical, psychological and sexual violence. Also, children may be taken away from chronic alcoholics and drug addicts. Besides, if the parents abuse or, vice versa, do not fulfil their parenting duties – for example, do not pay alimony – they may also become unparented.

Parents may be brought to responsibility on the initiative of child care authorities, law enforcement bodies, teachers and relatives.

Unparenting does not exempt the parents from the obligation to sustain their children.

The West: from money fine up to jail time

Most developed countries have services specially dedicated to protection of children’s rights. And almost every country’s legislation obliges the parents to carefully look after their babies, and criminal liability for leaving a child unattended is fixed in some states.

The USA have the so-called child care system. Any citizen may inform it of his suspicions regarding the child’s parents. The service studies the complaints of violence to the child, of the absence of adequate life conditions for him or for leaving him unattended. The punishment for the latter varies between fine and up to 30 days of imprisonment. Those kids who are in serious danger are sent to foster homes, to relatives or are placed under tutelage of a different family for the period of the investigation and trial.

The Great Britain has an agency, which specializes in the children’s rights. Its employees are tasked with ensuring that no underage has financial problems, is hungry or subject to violence at home or in the streets. Social services are also important. It is they who keep the watch so that no children would be left unattended. Parents are subject to criminal liability in the form of fine for leaving the children under 14 years of age unattended.

German law obliges parents to look after their children until they become of age. In particular, parents must sustain their children, protect them and, if necessary, represent their interests in court. Parents have no right to insult children and to apply force to them. Otherwise they are subject to criminal liability. Like the Great Britain, it is forbidden to leave the children under 14 years of age unattended in Germany. Parents may be fined for that, even they left for 10-15 minutes only.

Italian parents are obliged to sustain, educate and raise their children in accordance with their wishes, abilities and inclinations. They are prohibited to leave children under 12 years of age unattended, and risk being unparented in the case of multiple violations of this rule. Similar punishment for such breach of law is fixed for Finnish parents, with the only difference being the age of the child – 10 years.

Canadian legislation stipulates the most severe punishment for leaving children unattended. There, those parents, who leave children under ten years of age unattended, risk up to five years of prison.

Most children, who disappear, do so by themselves

The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs informs that over 1,5 thousand children are missing in Russia, a third of them under 12 years of age. Most of them leave their families and orphanages by themselves; many are registered by the sections of the affairs of the underage children.

The Russian police, within the framework of criminal cases investigation, was searching for 779 underage children. 33 persons were victims. 239 persons were still searched for as of the end of 2011, some of them have already been found this year.

The Moscow police informs that 300 children were reported missing since the beginning of the year. 142 children are still wanted. The others – over 50 per cent – were found within 3 days of their disappearance and returned to the families.

Advocate Tatiana Starikova believes that the main problem, when a child goes missing, is that the policemen are reluctant to immediately accept the respective report and initiate the searches, hoping that the child will reappear by himself.

T.Starikova said: “Therefore, if the parents sense that something has happened to the child, they should behave with insistency. If the police remains inactive, a complaint should be filed with the prosecutor’s office”.

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