Hi Hope, great thread....lots of food for thought. If it's clear enough, yes, I think everyone has a responsibility...but sometimes (and I'm not trying to minimize the real cases of abuse) but sometimes people are too quick to point things out...I believe that occasionally spanking a kid (not hard and not often, of course) is an ok way to discipline them, and someone may interpret this as abuse and call in whatever agencies etc...and the kid might be taken away from parents who actually love them very much and don't actually abuse them and this could then lead to kids falling through the cracks in the system...possibly being placed in an abusive situation etc...I've heard of a case here in Canada where a woman from...I can't remember,...I think it was Romania took her toddler to a doctor several times for colds etc. and they almost took the kid away...because the mother was overprotective???(the woman went back to Romania) meanwhile, real cases of abuse are going unnoticed... I don't know...all I'm saying is...it can be tough to recognize...As you say though, for cases that are beyond a doubt...yeah, everyone should be more aware and willing to act...

But then, as Nic also points out...how can millions and millions (actually probably billions) of people (large numbers of whom are children) be allowed to starve do death, to die from preventable disease, to live on a dollar a day etc? (Sorry, don't mean to take away from your actual topic...it's just that it's so mind-boggling)...