PROTECTION OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1078, 17 March 1911, Page 9

PROTECTION OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

SUGGESTED LEGISLATION". (By Telegraph—Special Correspondent.) Christchurch, March 10. At the annual meeting of the Canterbury brancli of. the Society, for the i'roteet'ion of Women and Children this afternoon, the president (Mrs. A. C. Sandsiein) stated tiiat during the year SS new cases were dealt with. The committee ivas also in touch with a large number of the 101 cases dealt with in former, vears. The president continued: *'TU<: cases of ill-used wives are often sickening in detail and loudly call- for amendment in our marriage laws. The fact that a drunken husband should be able to uso. the vilest epithets to his wife, and rain blows upon her person, and treat Iter in other ways not fit to mention, without her having any legal remedy for want of Witnesses, loudly calls for redress. Tho legislation introduced by our present Minister for Justice to deal with deserting husbands has our highest commendation. In these cases wo advise that no y-arrnnt for the arrest of her husband on the charge of having deserted her should be granted to a wife without her being 'required to give a surety in her own recognisance that she will appear in Court to prosecute, her husband when he is being tried for having deserted her. But it is when dealing with neglected or ili-used children that our pity is oftenest stirred to indignation. It is not by any means boarded-out children who suffer most. These aro subject to inspection, and any gross cruelty or neglect.practised upon them is generally promptly and adequately dealt with. It is the children living in charge of a drunken or cruel parent, or adopting parents, that are exposed to the keenest suffering, and whose cases are the most difficult of redress, and it is here that an amendment of Ihp law is needed. A home for mentally deficient girls on the same lines as that for boys at-Otekaike'is urgently needed." Mr. G. W. Russell. M.P.; referring to the Government subsidy, impressed on the society (hut they should look upon it as a -windfall, and sMd that as far as he know there was no prospect of it bein.T repeated. The Hov. P. Rule adwared the amendment of the law r«>»nrdin<* the adoption nf children on the lines of the Victorian Act, and the enactment of a Drobationarv law in respect to juvenile offenders.