Can You Defend Yourself Against A Child Who Is Under The Age of Criminal Intent?

Mark Dawes' Podcasts

I recently had a conversation with someone who told me that their wife is having to have her neck surgically re-built with bone taken from other parts of her body.

The injury was caused by an eight-year-old child violently pulling the member of staff's hair causing the person's head to jerk back violently.

More recently in the news a teaching assistant who was ‘punched, pinched and kicked’ by a five-year-old boy in her reception class has been awarded £140,000 in compensation.

Now (generally speaking) a five-year-old or eight-year-old child would be classed as a minor and possibly even categorised as vulnerable, due to their young age.

As such, any training given to staff in the schools they attend or the care home they reside in to enable staff to control and restrain them may be 'low-level' training, involving techniques that are designed not to cause any harm to the child.

But where does a member of staff stand if they are violently attacked by a child (someone under the age of eighteen) who may also be under the age of criminal intent (which is 10 years of age in the UK, 12 years of age in Scotland) if the techniques they have been taught don't cater for such an attack?

This is important to know because someone under the age of criminal intent cannot commit a crime in the UK, but they can still behave violently as we can see from the above examples.

"So if a child is attacking you can you act in self-defence against the child?"

To read the full blog post click here - https://nfps.info/can-you-defend-yourself-against-a-child-who-is-under-the-age-of-criminal-intent-video/