Yes and you are most likely to be involved in a fatal car accident within 25 miles of where you live, so I guess you should never drive within 25 miles of where you live.
The question is not whether those close to children are more likely to abuse them than those who are not close to children. It’s obvious that those who abuse children will be those who are close to them since those who are not close to them simply do not have the opportunity. The real question is: of those children who are abused, what percentage were abused by close relatives versus distant relatives or genetic non-relatives? I don’t know where to find this kind of statistic but I’m willing to bet money that - of children who are abused - the percentage of them who were abused goes down as genetic relatedness to their abuser increases. In other words, of those children who are abused, more are abused by non-relatives than distant relatives, and more are abused by distant relatives than by close relatives, and so on. It makes no sense to cite statistics without controlling for known variables (access to the child).
No, they have custodial rights because human family evolved prior to human law. Law is generally comprised of solutions to common disputes that arise as a result of human nature and circumstance. Human nature is logically and historically antecedent to law.
Since the human family already emerged prior to laws that enable the settlement of disputes between family members, it makes sense to try to understand the particulars of human family in order to criticize family law. It makes no sense to criticize the law if you have no better reasons why it should be this way than that. That the two people most closely genetically related to children should emerge as the primary caretakers (provision and protection) is no accident. A child carries 50% of each of its parents’ DNA. Those humans who neglected or abused their children in the distant past were less likely to pass on their neglectful and abusive genes. The myth of widespread neglect and abuse among parents is a modern, statist myth. I think the Nazis were the earliest adopters of this disgusting myth.
Another statist myth, that the only rights of concern are the rights of the children. This is a disingenuous legal tactic deployed in dirty divorces and other family law disputes… “I’m arguing for the interests of the children, the interests of the parents are not the issue here.” But they often are the issue. Since young children generally cannot speak for themselves in any meaningful way, it is not possible to simply ask children what they want or expect them to stick up for themselves. Young children need advocates. In the natural order, I would expect those advocates - in the case of parental abuse - to be the child’s extended family since those extended family who did not stick up for their grandchildren, nieces, nephews and so on in the distant past were less likely to pass on their lackadaisical genes. Therefore, the dispute - even in a case of parents abusing their children - is not between the children and the parents but between the parents and the children’s advocate(s). Since the advocate is not the child himself or herself, when the advocate speaks of the “child’s rights”, he is really speaking of his own rights. In other words, if Grandma comes and says, “John and Julie abuse their child by spanking him and I’m just concerned about the child’s rights, not John’s and Julie’s rights” she is really arguing for her own rights, that is, her right to oust the parents from guardianship and take over guardianship. It’s a testament to the sham that is our modern legal system that such arguments actually fly.
The biggest mistake we can make for the welfare of our children is to enable the criminal State to act as a child advocate.
Clayton -