近十年來(2006-2016)臺灣兒少保護案件的通報案量與成案人數快速增加,此一趨勢普遍被解讀為兒少安全處境的惡化,引起政府與社會大眾的高度關注;然而由於臺灣法令沿襲英美立法中對於兒童虐待的模糊定義,加之實務上的成案標準鮮少成為本土文獻探問的對象,家長或照顧者的何種管教行為可能使其成為登記在冊的「施虐者」,事實上是一道為迷霧所壟罩的謎題。為了理解「兒童虐待」在制度上的實質內涵,我提出以下研究問題:第一、實務上,兒少保護案件的成案決策方式與決策依據為何?第二、2010年後由監察院引發的一系列制度變革對於家防中心的制度實作是否造成影響?何種影響?第三、基層工作者的成案決策標準會受到哪些個人或脈絡性的條件影響?其影響機制為何?透過深度訪談來自四個縣市共16位基層兒少保護工作者,以及分析相關法令、工作手冊、監調報告等書面資料,本文的主要研究發現如下:一、日益加重的監管與懲處力道使得成案決策變得如同一道博弈遊戲,基層工作者為降低「Type-1 Error」發生的機率,發展出許多「避險策略」,這造成成案決策的整體標準在近幾年明顯下降,換言之,以往被認為屬於「合理管教」的管教行為在如今有更高的機率被指認為「不當管教」,家長也更容易成為制度上的「施虐者」;二、個別兒少保社工的成案標準相當歧異,構築成一道自零體罰至嚴重成傷的光譜,他們的成案標準受到自身「管教敘事」的影響,在這些敘事之中,社工對於童年受管教經驗的詮釋、對於自身作為兒少保社工的角色認同、以及他們在工作中學著「為人父母」的經驗,深刻影響著社工的「管教紅線」。本文在鉅觀、中層與微觀的層層分析下發現,「兒童虐待」的意義在制度實作的過程中不斷地轉折與發散,原本應當以研判與管控案家風險為己任的三級預防工作者,如今縈繞著他們的反而是難以預測的究責風險,「兒少最佳利益」在官僚理性重重包裹後的結果,卻反而形成了對於家長親職管教更為嚴苛的制度環境。
Over the last decade (2006-2016), the reported child abuse allegations and substantiated abused children have both been increasing sharply, which has commonly been considered as a sign of deterioration of children’s safety, raising public and government’s concerns. However, due to the ambivalent statutory definitions of child abuse in Taiwanese laws, which was a legal reception of British and American child protection laws, it has been remained unknown when parental discipline would cross the line to become child abuse. For the purpose of shedding light on the practical content and standard of child abuse, I proposed three questions: first, what was the practical method of making a substantiation decision? Second, what would the institutional reforms arising from the Control Yuan’s corrective measures since 2010 affect the administration of local CPS agencies? Third, what would contextual factors and CPS workers’ personal characteristics affect their decision-making? Based on in-depth interviews with 16 CPS workers and agency managers from 4 cities/counties and analysis of the statutes, work guidelines, and reports of the Control Yuan, the main findings of the present study were: first, the increasingly intense surveillance on and punishment of decision errors have turned the substantiation decision-making into a bureaucratic game. In such a game, agency managers and frontline workers have developed a variety of “hedging strategies” to reduce the incidence of “type-1 error”, leading to a lower overall threshold of substantiation decision. In other words, specific parental discipline strategies recognized as “reasonable discipline” in the past were more likely to be judged as “inadequate/excessive discipline” at present, which means parents now were easier to become “abusers” legally. Second, the CPS workers’ practical standards of substantiation were some divergent, extensively scattering on a spectrum where one end was zero-tolerance to corporal punishment while the other end was severe injuries. The divergent decision thresholds were found resulting from different “discipline narratives” held by individual CPS workers. In these narratives, workers’ interpretation of childhood discipline experience, their identity as a CPS worker and their work experience where they have had to learned how to be a parent all affected how they drew the line between reasonable corporal punishment and abuse. Through exploration and analysis of macro-, meso-, and micro-level conditions and practices, I found that the meaning of “child abuse” has constantly been transformed and diverged, and that the CPS staffs who shall dedicate themselves to assessing and managing risks of clients, have been obsessed by the anxieties about the risks of being punished. The so-called “best-interests of the child” were wrapped by several layers of bureaucratic reasoning, indirectly leading to a tougher environment for parenting and parental discipline.