This chapter explains principles of safeguarding, the relevant law and statutory framework, the role of the anaesthetist in safeguarding, specific forms of abuse, the safeguarding process for children when concerns arise and the investigation process when a child dies.

This chapter explores what we know about violence against young people with cognitive disability. It looks at what can make it more likely that young people with cognitive disability are abused. It’s hard to really know how many young people with cognitive disability have experienced violence. Young people with cognitive disability can be harmed by workers, family, or friends who are meant to help them. Abuse can happen in many places. Services and society need to learn how to keep young people with cognitive disability safe. We need to make sure young people can make decisions for themselves.

Young people with cognitive disability, families, and practitioners reported many acts of violence against young people. The violence included physical abuse, sexual assault/abuse, neglect, exploitation, emotional and psychological abuse, and domestic and family violence. Young people were abused by other young people with disability, family members, partners, practitioners, and services. Young people in this book found the strength to speak up and tell their stories of violence.

This chapter tells Amethyst’s story. Amethyst is an Aboriginal and South Sea Islander young woman with cognitive disability. Amethyst is not her real name. Amethyst was abused many times as a child and a young adult. Her story can tell us a lot about what needs to change for young people with cognitive disability. We need to understand that abuse affects a person’s whole life, their family, and their world.

Becoming an adult involved lots of changes and challenges for young people with cognitive disability. Many services, and sometimes families, judged young people badly because they had a cognitive disability. Young people needed help to be independent, but this wasn’t always given to them. Some young people were lonely and found so-called friends who abused them. Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander young people and young people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds needed others to understand and respect their culture. LQBTIQA+ young people wanted love and acceptance as they became adults.

With a specific focus on violence and abuse, this chapter explores some the challenges that LGBTIQ people often experience, but also the strengths that LGBTIQ people display. The chapter reviews research on intimate partner violence experienced by LGBTIQ people (including identity-related abuse) and the violence perpetrated against animals in these contexts. Situating challenges alongside strengths is an important counter to the often negative messages and stereotypes that circulate about LGBTIQ people, as it encourages a focus on identifying sites of resistance and opportunities for change. The chapter therefore also explores the resiliencies that LGBTIQ people display in the face of adversity, including through relationships with animal companions.

The concept of “constitutional identity” in the context of the EU has evolved significantly over the years, leading to complex debates and challenges. This chapter explores the historical trajectory of constitutional identity in the EU, from its early emergence in response to concerns about sovereignty to its current state of political and legal contestation. The chapter highlights that while constitutional identity is a global concept, the European experience exhibits distinct characteristics. Two noteworthy factors contributing to this distinctiveness are Europe’s legal integration and the inclusion of an identity clause in EU law (Article 4(2) TEU), a unique feature in supranational constitutionalism. The chapter argues against abandoning the concept of constitutional identity due to its recent abuses, asserting that it is a legally recognized notion within EU law. Instead, the chapter claims the focus should be on identifying and addressing abuses while acknowledging the concept’s importance in balancing competing fundamental principles within the EU legal framework. It concludes by emphasizing the need to distinguish between legitimate uses of constitutional identity and its abusive applications, advocating for the protection of constitutional identities that align with EU core principles and calling for the development of a European constitutional identity as a complementary concept.

This chapter examines the specific challenges faced by individuals with a history of childhood maltreatment (CM) as they transition into parenthood. The transition to parenthood involves many challenges that require adjustment, such as adapting to one’s own bodily changes (for the birthing parent), forging a parental identity, and attaching to the infant. Although these tasks may not be easy for any parent-to-be, those who have experienced maltreatment during their childhood may find them especially difficult. One crucial domain in which these early life experiences might influence their core parenting skills is the ability to emotionally regulate themselves as well as model positive emotional regulatory processes for their children. The author presents various perspectives to explain how these early life experiences of abuse and neglect affect parental emotion self-regulation and current parenting approaches. This chapter adds valuable tools to the parental toolbox of those with a history of CM and guides such parents on how their regulatory skills can be improved to better equip themselves to cope with potential parenting challenges and raise well-adjusted children.

Chapter 5 deals extensively with tutelle in the late nineteenth century by concentrating on the working lives of minors, mostly as apprentices and domestics. Minors performed a wide variety of tasks, some of them gender-specific. Young girls did mostly household and domestic tasks; boys became apprentices and learned artisanal crafts. Of the artisanal crafts, carpentry was the most popular, but masons, blacksmiths, tailors, seamstresses, and grain pounders took wards as apprentices. In the 1880s and 1890s, the state confided minors to institutions including Catholic missions, though not always to serve as apprentices. Case studies detail the ways in which their labor was exploited and how they responded to coercion and abuse. They reveal considerable delinquency and misery, which sometimes led to incarceration. The relationship between minors and their guardians in work settings was often characterized by discord, even violence. The chapter explores abuses in tutelle including the hiring out of minors without informing French authorities and the refusal of guardians to compensate minors for their labor when warranted. The chapter analyzes complaints lodged by guardians about minors and the ways in which minors exercised agency. It ends with an exploration of sexual exploitation and prostitution.

Chapter 6 deals with twentieth-century legislation of tutelle in response to earlier legislative failures, revelations about the lack of supervision, abuse of minors, and the disregard for French laws governing slavery and slave trading, all of which led to the crisis of 1903 and 1904.. It begins with the central legislative question in 1903 which revolved around contravention of the 1831 law which prohibited the purchase or selling of slaves. The question was whether the law applied to slave trading in Africa. Were French citizens engaging in outright slave trading or doing so under the guise of rachat? Revelations and judgments rendered in court cases at the time led to state intervention that gave rise to calls for censuses of liberated minors and rigorous accountability of guardianship. The chapter analyzes prominent cases of slave trading and their ramifications. It explores Governor Guy’s Act of 1903, which attempted to regulate guardianship effectively following his complaint that the redemption of minors was a subterfuge for slavery. The chapter offers an assessment of the clashes between leading French officials and ends with the replacement of the Procureur Général by the Secretaire Général as the primary administrator of guardianship.

Flight and other aspects of life in tutelle, such as marriage, abuse, and death, are taken up in Chapter 8. The chapter analyzes flight from the 1870s. Many minors fled after alleging mistreatment by their guardians. Others absconded to rid themselves of unhappy circumstances. The legal authorities normally acted and launched searches, often to no avail. Guardians generally disregarded the laws and regulations governing guardianship with impunity, including the requirement to notify the authorities when leaving Senegal with their wards. Some moved to other parts of Senegal; others to other parts of Africa; still others to France, temporarily or permanently. Although guardians had the upper hand in their dealings with minors and prevailed with the administration, the latter lodged complaints against them for poor treatment, deprivation, and abuse with police commissioners. Guardians often kept wards in tutelle well beyond the age of eighteen. While in tutelle, some wards, mostly females, got married following proposals mainly from newly emancipated slaves, predominantly Tirailleurs Sénégalais. In all cases, guardians took charge, made the arrangements, and notified the authorities. The chapter ends with the death of liberated minors in tutelle in both Senegal and France.