Court: |
WI Supreme Court |
|
Facts: |
Husband abuses the son; wife takes no preventive action. |
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Posture: |
Defendant's motion to dismiss was granted at trial; state appeals.
Court of appeals reversed the dismissal, saying that she can
be tried as an aider/abettor, but not a direct abuser. |
|
Issue: |
If a parent knows of abuse, and does nothing about it, can she be
tried as a direct abuser? |
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Holding: |
Yes. Decision of the court of appeals is affirmed. |
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Rule: |
The ordinary and accepted meeting meaning of "subjects" does not
mean only active participants in abuse. |
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Reasoning: |
The purpose of the statute is to protect children from abuse.
Subjecting a child to abuse means subjecting a child to
abhorrent conduct. This is an objective standard. You
are doing this if you place a child at foreseeable risk
of this conduct. It must be a failure to act in knowing
disregard of the facts giving rise to a duty to act. |
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Dicta: |
This doesn't require commission: omission can count just as well.
Most omissions are not crimes, because a legal duty to act
would be required. Even though there's no literal legally
prescribed duty here, we're not creating a common law crime,
because a failure to act which exposes a dependent person to
a proscribed result is a substantive crime as described in
the criminal code. |