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What do I do if a child tells me about abuse?

Knowing how damaging abuse is to children, it is up to the adults around them to take responsibility for stopping it.




If a child tells you about abuse:

The following suggestions would be applicable in some cases...if the child mentions sexual, or physical abuse agencies need to be contacted as a priority. The immediate safety of the child is paramount.

•Stay calm and be reassuring

•Find a quiet place to talk

•Believe in what you are being told

•Listen, but do no press for information

•Say that you are glad that the child told you

•If it will help the child to cope. say that the abuser has a problem

•Say that you will do your best to protect and support the child

•If necessary, seek medical help and contact the police or social services

•If your child has told another adult, such as a teacher or school nurse, contact them. Their advice may make it easier to help your child

•Determine if this incident may affect how your child reacts at school. It may be advisable to liaise with you child's teacher, school nurse or headteacher

•Acknowledge that your child may have angry, sad or even guilty feelings about what happened, but stress that the abuse was not the child's fault. Acknowledge that you will probably need help dealing with your own feelings

You may consider using the school as a resource, as the staff should have a network of agencies they work with, and be able to give you advice.

You can contact official agencies or self-help groups. If you are concerned about what action may be taken, ask before you proceed

If  you notice bruises, cuts abrasions any form of external violence ensure that the child is secure in the knowledge that they will not need to face the abuser alone, reassurance is vital.

Essays on Child Abuse.

Child Abuse - physical, sexual, or emotional maltreatment or neglect of children by parents, guardians, or others responsible for a child's welfare. Physical abuse is characterized by physical injury, usually inflicted as a result of a beating or inappropriately harsh discipline. Sexual abuse includes molestation, incest, rape, prostitution, or use of a child for pornographic purposes. Neglect can be physical in nature (abandonment, failure to seek needed health care), educational (failure to see that a child is attending school), or emotional (abuse of a spouse or another child in the child's presence, allowing a child to witness adult substance abuse). Inappropriate punishment, verbal abuse, and scapegoating are also forms of emotional or psychological child abuse. Some authorities consider parental actions abusive if they have negative future consequences, e.g., exposure of a child to violence or harmful substances, extending in some views to the passive inhalation of cigarette smoke (see smoking).




In practice, there are borderline areas where what constitutes child abuse is not clear. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled (1944) that parents do not have an absolute right to deny life-saving medical treatment to their children, but devout members of the Church of Christ, Scientist, and other churches believe in the healing power of prayer and do not always seek medical help. Most U.S. states, however, permit parents to use religious beliefs as a defense against prosecution for the withholding of medical treatment from their sick children, even in cases where the lack of treatment results in a child's death.



Causes and Effects



There are many interacting causes of child abuse and neglect. Characteristics or circumstances of the abuser, the child, and the family may all contribute. In many cases the abuser was abused as a child. Substance abuse (see drug addiction and drug abuse) has been identified as a key factor in a growing number of cases. In some cases abusers do not have the education and skills needed to raise a child, thus increasing the likelihood of abuse, and providing inadequate parental role models for future generations. Children who are ill, disabled, or otherwise perceived as different are more likely to be the targets of abuse. In the family, marital discord, domestic violence, unemployment and poverty, and social isolation are all factors that can precipitate abuse.



Patterns of abusive behavior may result in the physical or mental impairment of the child or even death. Small children are especially vulnerable to physical injury such as whiplash or shaken infant syndrome resulting from battery. Abused children are more likely to experience generalized anxiety, depression, truancy, shame and guilt, or suicidal and homicidal thoughts or to engage in criminal activity, promiscuity, and substance abuse.



Intervention in Child Abuse Cases



In the United States, New York became the first state to institute child protection laws (1875) that made abuse against children a crime, and other states soon followed with similar laws. In 1974 the U.S. Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, which encouraged remaining states to pass child protection laws and created the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect. In addition, all states have their own reporting laws, juvenile and family court laws, and criminal laws.



Cases of child abuse are handled by an multidisciplinary team including medical personnel, law enforcement officers, the schools, social workers, and the courts. School personnel may be the first to notice and report signs of abuse. Child-abuse cases are often coordinated by a community's child protective services unit, which sends case workers to the home for evaluation and offers services to the child and family. Medical professionals may report cases, provide treatment for injured children, provide testimony in court, or help to educate parents. Law enforcement personnel may be involved when cases are reported or when there is a question of a criminal action. The courts provide emergency protective orders or decide whether the child should be removed from the home. Child abuse may be punished by incarceration of the perpetrator or by the denial of custody rights to abusive parents or guardians.



Incidence



Despite efforts to reduce child abuse in America, more than a million children are physically abused each year; about 2,000 die. Although the magnitude of sexual abuse of children in the United States is unknown, it is considered to be an escalating problem, and one that can result in serious psychological damage among victims. There are no reliable statistics available for emotional abuse and neglect, but these types of child abuse are as potentially damaging to their victims as are various forms of physical abuse. Child abuse extends across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines, but there are consistently more reports concerning children born into poverty. The reporting of child abuse is complicated by the private nature of the crime, the fearfulness of the child, and strong motivation for denial in the abuser.



Bibliography



See J. Goldstein, A. Freud, A. J. Solnit, and S. Goldstein, In the Best Interests of the Child (1986); J. Garbarino, E. Guttmann, and J. W. Seeley, The Psychologically Battered Child (1987); D. E. H. Russell, The Secret Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women (1986); R. E. Helfer and R. S. Kempe, The Battered Child (4th ed. 1987); D. J. Besharov, Recognizing Child Abuse: A Guide for the Concerned (1990); publications of the National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect.



The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright© 2004, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. All rights reserved.





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Suffer the children


Posted by Tim Roux in: Books, Children, Family, Literature, Non-Fiction, Relationships, Sex, Social Issues, Sociology, Women's Rights Leave a comment

We mostly have the same script about how childhood should be.



A baby enters as a warm bundle into a sometimes wet world. Especially in Britain, we know that that the sun doesn’t always shine. We are realists.



The growing child should be loved and cherished, and allowed to run free (and safely).



At a certain point, school, friendships and romance flow through to a young adult’s triumphal entry onto the world stage as a happy, balanced and generous human being ready to contribute fully towards society, not least by repeating this cycle.



Sometimes this happens.



Sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes it so doesn’t happen that it rips you apart.



Sometimes this ripping apart isn’t academic.



Stacey Danson started being taught to pleasure men at the age of three. Yeah, yeah, I know, I think that is too early too. By five, she was swallowing them, and by six she had lost her virginity. No, no, no, silly, she didn’t get pregnant. And don’t worry, there was always a family doctor on hand to assist Stacey. He was on top of her illnesses and then he was on top of her.



Whatever would they think up next?



That is just a little part of the first chapter of Stacey Danson’s ‘Empty Chairs’, a book she wrote because she felt she must more than because she felt a compulsion to write it. She hated writing it; she hated reliving what had happened to her. She had to get very, very drunk to get started (it didn’t help).



The book is called ‘Empty Chairs’ as a reference to the group therapy sessions Stacey attended where fellow victims of child abuse sat on those chairs around her screaming and sobbing out their tales. Many of those chairs are empty now and not because their occupants have come to terms with what has happened to them. Sometimes it seems wiser to call it quits.



‘Empty Chairs’ will be published later this year by Night Publishing as part of a series of books on child abuse, another being Kat Ward’s ‘Being Sick Is Wicked’. We have already published Charles Huxford’s ‘Run, rabbit, run’ account of the systematic rape of children in a North Wales orphanage c. 1980 by a group of well-connected people, including a UK Government Minister, as a short story in the Speak Without Interruption collection ‘….at last!’.



Perhaps the most astonishing thing about ‘Empty Chairs’ is that it is beautifully, beautifully written. The next most astonishing thing is that Stacey ever lived to write it.



You can read an interview between T.L. Tyson and Stacey here, and the first precisely graphic and strangely uplifting chapter of ‘Empty Chairs’ on Night Reading here. The horror is the horror. The miracle is what you read.



Thank you, Stacey. You may not have been lucky, but you have been beyond brave.



We salute you, but now we must run off to save the others.



Links:



TL Tyson interview: http://tltyson.weebly.com/stacey-danson-interview.html



Chapter 1 of ‘Empty Chairs’ by Stacey Danson: http://nightreading.ning.com/profiles/blogs/empty-chairs

News Flashes on EMPTY CHAIRS the Book.

Read the horrifying STATISTICS.

Child Abuse


Child abuse and neglect is frightfully high. As a country this is unacceptable. We need to come up with better ways to fight this “disease” before we destroy our children, our future.

An estimated 903,000 children across the country were victims of abuse or neglect in 2001, according to national data released by the Department of Health and Human Services. The statistics indicate that about 12.4 out of every 1,000 children were victims of abuse or neglect, a rate comparable to the previous year's victimization rate of 12.2 out of 1,000 children.

"A nation as compassionate as ours should ensure that no child is a victim of abuse or neglect. The number of children that are being abused and neglected this country is an unacceptable daily tragedy," HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said. "We must do more to protect our most vulnerable children. That's why President Bush has proposed an important new approach to give states the tools and resources they need to prevent abuse and care for these young victims."

As part of HHS' fiscal year 2004 budget request, the Bush Administration is proposing a new approach to protect children in the child welfare system. Under the plan, states would have the option of using some money now designated solely for foster care to support a range of abuse-preventive services and programs. The proposal provides the flexibility and sustained financial support necessary to build innovative programs for children and families aimed at preventing maltreatment and removal from home.

"Every time a child is abused or neglected, the whole human race suffers," said Wade F. Horn, Ph.D., assistant secretary for children and families. "President Bush's plan to prevent this terrible problem will point the way to happier lives for many children."

The rate of child neglect and abuse in 2001 was about 19 percent less than the rate in 1993, when maltreatment peaked at an estimated 15.3 out of every 1,000 children. As recently as 1998, the rate was 12.9 per 1,000 children. The rate dropped to 11.8 per 1,000 children in 1999 and then returned to 12.2 per 1,000 children in 2000.

This problem has, because of more resources and ability to come forward, gone down in the past few years. For the same reason in the mid – eighties and early nineties it was up. Before then few came forward, then it was encouraged and more did. In 1994, over 3 million (3,140,000) children were reported for child abuse and neglect to child protective service (CPS) agencies in the United States. This figure represents a 4.5% increase over the number of children reported in 1993. Experts attribute much of the recent increase in reporting to greaterpublicawareness of and willingness to report child maltreatment, as well as changes in how states collected or defined a reportable act of maltreatment (Wiese & Daro, 1995). Currently, about 47 out of every 1,000 children are reported as victims of child maltreatment. Overall, child abuse reporting levels have increased 63% between 1985 and 1994.



In 1994, 1,036,000 children were substantiated by CPS as victims of child maltreatment. This represents 16 out of every 1,000 U.S. children. According to the 1994 survey, physical abuse represented 21% of confirmed cases, sexual abuse 11%, neglect 49%, emotional maltreatment 3% and other forms of maltreatment 16%. These percentages have remained fairly stable since 1986 when approximately 27% of the children were reported for physical abuse, 16% for sexual abuse, 55% for neglect, and 8% for emotional maltreatment (AAPC, 1988).

In 1986, approximately 22.6 children per 1,000 experienced abuse or neglect. Only half of these incidents were reported to CPS agencies (Sedlak, 1990). In 1994, an estimated 1,271 child abuse and neglect related fatalities were confirmed by CPS agencies. Since 1985, the rate of child abuse fatalities has increased by 48%. Based on these numbers, more than three children die each day as a result of child abuse or neglect (Wiese & Daro, 1995).

In 1994, those states which kept this statistic reported that almost 88% of these children are less than five years old at the time of their death with 46% under one year of age (Wiese & Daro, 1995). As for cause of death, 42% of deaths resulted from neglect, 54% from physical abuse and 4% from a combination of neglectful and physically abusive parenting. Approximately 45% of these deaths occurred to children known to child protective service agencies as current or prior clients.

Studies of the general population of adults show that anywhere from 6 to 63% of females were sexually abused as children. A 1985 L.A. Times national survey found that 27% of women and 16% of men reported being sexually abused prior to age 18.

Abuse and neglect, sadly, are very common. We must do something more to prevent this atrocity, but what can we do?









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