The case of Simek Kitty garnered a lot of interest in the media between 2002 and 2005. The fourteen-year-old girl, who endured her stepfather's physical, verbal, and sexual abuse for ten years, one day shot the aggressive man with his own weapon. Although the court sentenced the young girl for her deed, the President of the Republic gave her amnesty, so she did not have to go to jail after all. However, her life turned even worse after the incident. In my study, I examine why the events turned out the way they did and how the tragedy could have been avoided.
The status of children, and their role have both undergone significant changesall over the world in the past half century. The rights and vulnerabilities of the child are now the subject of increased attention in all fields, including in the framework of the judicial process. Today, the notion of child-friendly justice is not unknown in Hungary although it is yet to be decided if the proper term is child-friendly or child-centred. The means of ensuring that the rights of the child are respected are common to all procedures; however, the traumas and adverse experiences they may have found themselves subjected to are widely diverse in civil cases (usually the establishment of parental supervision), criminal cases (usually crimes where the victim is a child), and in procedures specific to the tutelage authority; so, the question deserves examination in view of such specificities. The adoption of the New York Convention was a significant milestone in the domain of the rights of the child; however, laying down the theoretical foundations was only relatively slowly followed by a dynamic of development in practice, and that took place with a wide degree of variability in different fields. In Europe — as in Hungary —, the participation of the child during the procedure meant the same as a hearing when the child is addressed questions. Today we know that Laura Lundy was right when in several of her studies she drew attention to the fact that true participation is more than simply asking the child questions. In my research, I set myself the task to create a type of catalogue for the procedural rights of the child and to answer the question: what more can we do that has not yet been done in order to avoid transforming participation in a procedure into a burden, or even worse, a trauma for the child, but instead making it the reflection of a plenitude of rights, a defining but not uncomfortable experience?
Child protection in justice is designed to prevent crime among children and juveniles, to keep them away from further crime, and to reintegrate young offenders into society. So, it also covers the areas of prevention, enforcement, and aftercare. As early as the beginning of the twentieth century, it was recognized that child protection covers the elimination of a child's financial vulnerability, the prevention of moral misconduct, and the representation of the interests of both orphans and the unhealthy. The country's opportunities have been influenced not only by political ideologies but also by the human and material casualties suffered as a result of the two world wars. The current focus of child protection in justice is always on socio-economic and political problems. Examining the personality and family relationships of juvenile offenders also went a long way in the designated period. The protection of children in justice also affects the areas of administrative law, criminal substantive and procedural law, and criminology. At the end of the paper, I compare the institution of patronage and the preventive patronage.
