Child Abuse

Lesson 5 project

By: Terri Tipton

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Child abuse, Does anyone even care about this? unless it happened

in your life the answere is no.Child abuse is like a

diasease, it will attack the host and alter it physically

and mentaly.It self-replicates. \\\"Infection\\\" creates a downward spiral

through generations, each victim will most likely infect more and more victims. In order to fully understand the effects child

abuse has on childeren one must know when mistreatment becomes abuse.The meaning of abuse is defined by Webster

dictionary as; to use wrongly, to mistreat especially

by inflicting physical or sexual harm on another , mental abuse by use of

insulting language.Discipline is correcting the behavior of a child and showing the child how to behave in a more acceptable

way. It does not have to be physical. Child abuse is deliberately injuring a child in physical, sexual or verbal ways.This is why

society needs to take action now, and consider any form of child abuse a public safety

issue and define it as a criminal act. Did

you know that abuse is divided into four categories for policy, research and treatment purposes - the different types of abuse

have different effects, different types of perpetrators and different types of interventions.

The effects of child abuse on victims are devastating and life-long, and its effects on our society are pervasive. Still, it is

difficult to measure the prevalence of abuse in our society, and no attempts to measure so far have overcome the basic

difficulties of underreporting.For some years now there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of

children take their inevitable toll on society. This knowledge concerns every single one of us, and--if disseminated widely

enough--should lead to fundamental changes in society, above all to a halt in the blind escalation of violence. The following

points are intended to amplify my meaning: For their development children need the respect and protection of adults who take

them seriously, love them, and honestly help them to become oriented in the world. When these vital needs are removed and

children are instead abused for the sake of adults\\\' needs by being exploited, beaten, punished, take advantage of, manipulated,

neglected, or deceived without the intervention of any witness, then their integrity will be lastingly impaired. The normal

reactions to such injury should be anger and pain; since children in this hurtful kind of environment, however, are forbidden to

express their anger and since it would be unbearable to experience their pain all alone, they are compelled to suppress their

feelings, repress all memory of the trauma, and idealize those guilty of the abuse. Later they will have no memory of what was

done to them..Disassociated from the original cause, their feelings of anger, helplessness, despair, longing, anxiety, and pain will

find expression in destructive acts against others (criminal behavior, mass murder) or against themselves (drug addiction,

alcoholism, prostitution, psychic disorders, suicide).

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Our priorites as a society are not what they used to be, the frustrating facts are that we can measure everything from

the number of thumbtacks produced annually to the number of times an average person thinks about sex every week, but we

can not insure the safety of our childrens well being, future.Till now, society has protected the adult and blamed the victim. It

has been abetted in its blindness by theories, still in keeping with the pedagogical principles of our great-grandparents,

according to which children are viewed as crafty creatures, dominated by wicked drives, who invent stories and attack their

innocent parents or desire them sexually. In reality, children tend to blame themselves for their parents\\\' cruelty and to absolve

the parents, whom they invariably love.With the use of cost-effective solutions for child abuse and neglect.

private sector and volunteer organizations have taken the leadership role in healing our society of the effects of abuse. There are

many organizations, staffed by volunteers and funded through donations, which are doing good work to prevent and fix the

problem.

Some shocking statistics that are commonplace is that 1,000 to 1,300 U.S. children are known to die as a result of

physical abuse, and those who survive suffer emotional trauma that lasts long after the bruises.A child who is or has been

abused can have low self-esteem that leads to such self destructive behaviors as assult,robbery, drugs, child and spousal abuse

that canaltimatly lead up to maslaughter.Society lives in a double sided fear of the action of these children and the burden of

being