CHILD ABUSE

Child Abuse

Child Abuse

Current Knowledge of the Problem

Child abuse is one form of the maltreatment of a child or young person under 18 years of age. Four major categories of child abuse can be identified. First is physical abuse and, among the forms this can take, are shaking, hitting, poisoning, throwing, scalding or burning, suffocating and drowning. There are various forms of child abuse, and the risks to the very young of being seriously and repeatedly abused are staggeringly high. There are furthermore complex links between child abuse and domestic violence. Children who are not more than 1 years are more in danger of being killed than the children of any other ages. (Trochim, 2006)

All children are most at risk to all these forms of abuse from those who care for them. Some 600 children are added to the child defence register every week. Children in local authority care are at risk of serious forms of abuse as well, and deaths and suicides have resulted in these residencies. Close relatives, however, are the principal doubtful persons in the vast majority of all child homicides. In addition, child sexual abuse occurs more frequently in the familial context than it does in public spaces and by predatory paedophile strangers.

Definitions of abuse are notoriously variable, circular, or designed to have space for understanding on a situation-by-situation foundations. State definitions based on this law vary. Arguments concerning if a particular act constitutes abuse under such a definition can concentrate on the spirit of the act itself, if the act caused harm, if there was or should have been prior recognition that the act would cause harm, and if the caretaker might have prevented the harm. (Behrman, 2008)

In physical abuse, a distinction must be made between acceptable forms of discipline or punishment and abuse. As Maschi (2012) points out, definitions must specify if abuse should be defined in terms of particular actions or particular effects. He describes two children who are pushed roughly to the ground by their fathers. One falls against a carpeted floor, the other hits a protruding cupboard door. The second sustains a skull fracture, the first is uninjured. If an act must cause harm to be abuse, then the second child was clearly abused, while the first can not have been. Acts that leave no physical marks are harder to classify as abuse, and it is generally harder to sustain illegal convictions or obtain civil sanctions in such instances, even though an unmarked child can sustain as much or more psychological harm as from actions that cause physical signs of abuse. (Maschi, 2012)

In sexual abuse, definitional problems arise as well. Child sexual abuse is generally intrafamilial, and falls under the rubric of incest. While prohibitions against incest are universal, different cultures define incest to include, or exclude, different activities. "Close relative-child nudity, communal sleeping arrangements, and tolerance for masturbation and peer sex play in children coexist with stringent incest taboos, mothers in many cultures use genital manipulation to soothe ...