학대피해아동에 대한 단기간의 분리보호 및 친권제한조치 - 아동학대특례법의 내용을 중심으로 -

Abstract

Recently not only the number of child abuse cases is increasing sharply but also its phenomenon is getting diversified and serious. Korea established the foundation for government's official intervention system on child abuse cases through the complete revision of the Child Welfare Law in 2000, but its outcome was not significant. However, as a series of child death cases caused by cruel child abuse was known through media reports in 2014, it was served as a momentum to gradually improve its awareness. Particularly, the Special Act of Child Abuse, a separated independent law to regulate child abuse, was prepared on January 28, 2014 and enacted from September 28, 2014. There have been a lot of critics that the official intervention system against child abuse cases did not secure the effectiveness in protecting abused children, but this law contains a positive change in the aspect that a comprehensive procedure was established for the purpose of protecting children from abuse through the active intervention of the government. In addition, a lot of critics have been made because, different from the cases of other foreign countries, there has been no intervention of judicial authority for child abuse cases until now. But the establishment of the Special Act of Child Abuse provided a legal ground for courts to make active interventions on child abuse. In other words, it had a big significance that a system, operating systematically in association with the protection of abused children and the measures against abuse behaviors, was prepared mainly by family courts. Especially the establishment of various parental restriction measures, which could be applied flexibly according to each case, could contribute to overcoming the limit of correct countermeasure against parental right abuse and realizing child welfare in the situation of sharp increase of child abuse cases committed by their parents. Meanwhile, the primary purpose of legal measures against child abuse cases is the protection of abused children, but its effectiveness can be guaranteed only when constructing a systematic cooperation system between not only the protective measures for abused children but also the sanction against abusing parents. Particularly, in order to make the best operation out of various measures in the Special Act of Child Abuse, the role of family court is very important. In order to practically realize the purpose of the Special Act of Child Abuse and make a full use of its function, the construction of human and physical organization, such as establishing more child protection institutions by drawing up a larger budget and supplementing insufficient manpower, should be a prerequisite. For child abuse issue, government's active will to give the first priority to child policies and practice them is more required than anything else.