The first-ever meeting held by the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children happened on Thursday, April 29, 1875. The meeting was put in place by the founder to primarily discuss and draft structural policies aimed at protecting children from being abused since the country had not developed any laws spelling out how to protect children. On this historic day, Henry Bergh one of the founders ruled in favor of flogging which is a form of instilling discipline in children as long as it did not go to the point of abuse. He argued that there was a need to introduce an element of fear in children because failure to discipline would lead to the child disrespecting his or her peers and superiors (Lonne et al., 2015).
The NYSPCC laid a framework on how society would participate in preventing child abuse. The founder developed an objective that stated: “the object of the society is to help prevent and not punish cruelty to children.” Since, without society’s help the organization would achieve very little in controlling child abuse. The organization established a central registry for reporting child maltreatment, where the municipal police would report all the cases involving child mistreatment. They developed a telegraph that would be linked to the police headquarter to ease communication between the two department
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At the end of the meeting, the organization discussed the objectives for preventing and protecting children from being abused and pledged to remain faithful and loyal to the organization goal. These objectives included; saving young children from the cruelty and neglect, to help rescue abandoned and endangered children, and to improve all ways involved in the implementation of the laws intended for protecting and benefiting children. They further included suing and imposing punishment particularly on those abusing children through ill-treatment and neglect of children they claimed to care for (Myers, 2008). The meeting marked the official introduction of the organization in the protection of children from cruelty.
References
Lonne, B., Featherstone, B., Gray, M., & Harries, M. (2015). Working ethically in child protection. Routledge.
Myers, J. E. (2008). A short history of child protection in America. Family Law Quarterly, 42(3), 449-463.
