Child Abuse

Rebecca Smith
Mr.Huegh
3-11-15
3rd hour

I.

Introduction
A.
Story
B.
Facts on child abuse
II. Neglect
A.
What is neglect?
1.Little affection
2.Left alone
B. How can neglect affect a child?

1.Physically
2. Mentally
III. Sexual Abuse
A.
What is sexual abuse?
1. Statistics
2. What is the relationship between the victim and abuser
B. Consequences of sexual abuse
1.Behavior towards other children
2. How they feel about themselves
3. Behavior towards adults
IV. Physical Abuse
A.
Behavior of a physically abused child
1. How to recognize it
2.Who would recognize it
B. Appearance of a Physically Abused child
V. What Happens to the Abused Child
A.
Statistics
B.
How does the child feel
VI. Conclusion
A.
Final statement
B.
Story
My Search Story
An eight-year old son of a prominent Florida attorney was beaten with a baseball
bat by his father when the boys team lost a game. The reason? The child didnt
hustle during the game and had a tendency to give up. This boy is one of 896,000
kids who are Victims of abuse. Abuse is not just physical it can be in many forms such
as emotional, verbal, sexual, and neglect. Child abuse is an enormous problem
affecting all socioeconomic cultures, racial and religious groups. The abusers of the
child can be a variety of people. It is most common that the child knows their abuser.
The abuser can be a parent, caretaker or even a family member. People who abuse a
child are normally immature, and impulsive and have problems such as low self-esteem.
There are many types of child abuse and they all affect the child in many different ways.
When a child is being abused their appearance, self-esteem, behavior, and emotions

can change. The stress of abuse can harm the child and this can affect them for the rest
of their life.
It is hard to believe we all started at nothing. I had no idea how hard this research
was going to be. The past 3 weeks have been extremely exhausting. This project
started when we all began looking for topics. We went to the MeL Databases to
research the different controversial topics there were. I started with 5 different topics
that I want to research. I couldnt decide, I had animal rights, alcoholism, child abuse,
dog fighting and animal testing. I finally decided to do child abuse. After that we went to
the lab to get as many as 10 databases. On the 30th of January Mr. Heugh taught us
the C.R.A.P. test. This was where we had to see if a web site was a reliable source.We
had to do 2 different web sites and turn it in the next day. The 6th of February was the
day we were to turn the source cards in.The next step we took, was having four days to
write up note cards. By the end of each day we were to have 10 note cards done. To
write a note card we would put the source number in the top right corner and the place
where it would go in the final paper in the top left hand corner. Eventually we made our
final outline, it turned out only a few people had turned it in that day it was supposed to
be due.Finally one of our last steps was to create either an interview or a pole. This was
hard to decide because of pol would be easy but less informative and then interview
would be harder but more informative. There is also not a lot of people are willing to talk
about child abuse. Not knowing where to turn I emailed my counselor to see if she
would do the interview. To my surprise she said yes so on the 26th of February I
interviewed her. The interview went really well and I learned a lot.

Interview

For a while I thought I should do a pole because it would have been much easier
but then I thought that doing an interview would give me a stronger case. I finally
decided to do an interview. Contrary to my beliefs deciding to do an interview or a pole
was the easy part because then I had to find someone to interview. Deciding this was
hard, not a lot of people are willing to share their dark, deep, and painful memories of
being abused as a child. Then I thought if I can't interview someone who was abused I
can talk to someone who might know a lot about abuse. I decided to go to the counselor
at my school her name was Miss fields. She gave me a lot of important facts. I asked
her what could be some possible punishments of child abuse? She answer with
sometimes the child will be taken into protective services and a detective will search the
house or maybe the children will be removed from the household and the parents are
stripped of their parental rights. She also said that instead of a child choosing where to
go once they are removed from their parents that there are adults that know what is in
the best interest of the child. She said that in her nine years of being a counselor she
has seen injuries, like an open wound from being struck with a belt buckle and evidence
of a high heeled shoe being thrown at a child. She has also seen children go through
neglect, like a 12 year old old being left by her parents for a week while they went on a
cruise. She said some reasons for neglect are that the parents can't provide what needs
to be provided for the child such as medical care. The last question was that even if a
child can't remember the abuse can it still affect them? She said that is normally the
problem, it is our body's response mechanism, to forget, and the child can forget a lot of
their life.

My Research Findings

There are many forms of neglect and they affect the child in all different
ways. For a child to be considered neglected a parent must have repeatedly forgotten to
feed, change, buy the child proper clothes, get proper medical care, a good education
and or supervision. A child, especially a young one needs all these things and more. A
parent may not mean to or know that they are neglecting their child. For example if it
has diabetes and a parent doesn't know how or where to get the right kind of medical
care, this is can be considered neglecting the child even though the parent doesn't
mean to let alone want to. (Fields) As one can see neglect can happen for many
reasons even if the parent does love the child. One of the many forms of neglect is
emotional abuse. Emotional abuse can cause extremes in behavior from withdrawal to
anger, learning difficulties, nervous habits, or conduct disorders.(Mulryan) Also if the
child is being emotionally abused they can be constantly belittling, embarrassing,
blaming, or rejecting a child or withholding love and affection. (Mulryan) All these can
be signs of neglect and emotional abuse. And all these affect the child in numerous
ways. Being emotionally abused or neglected as a child may affect the child for the rest
of their lives.
One of the most sickening, barbaric, and disturbing forms of child abuse is sexual
abuse. There is more than one form of sexual abuse. Sexual comments or gestures
directed to a child can be taken as child abuse. (Alic) This form of sexual abuse would
be referred to as verbal, this is because it's more talking to the child sexually, than
actually performing it. But there is more types of sexual abuse such as physical sexual
abuse. Child abuse with contact including fondling, intercourse, any penetration and/or
oral sex regardless if the child or the abuser is performing is sexual abuse.(Mulryan)

Also inappropriate touching including breast, genital, or buttocks contact (Alic) Forcing,
pressuring, tricking or talking a child into engaging inappropriate touching or other
sexual activity (Alic) These are all forms of where sexual abuse can become physical
and verbal but there is also visual ways to abuse a child sexually. Exposing children to
erotic material, pornograph or exposing one's genitals to a child can be considered
visual child abuse. (Alic) Also child pornography where the abuser places pictures of the
child on the internet wearing seductive clothing. A lot of children can be apart of sexual
abuse without any adults even knowing it of the estimated 3.2 million reports of child
abuse in the U.S. in 2007, affecting 5.8 million children, 9.9% involved sexual abuse
(Alic) Of all the children approximately 90% of the sexually abused children know their
abusers personally, they can be a caretaker or parent (Mulryan) Elementary school age
and disabled are there at a particular risk of child abuse (Alic) This happens normally
because the child can't do anything about the abuse and can sometimes think it's all
their fault and that can cause serious problems. The victims of sexual abuse may
engage in promiscuous behavior due to confusion between sex and affection, or a
distorted sense of normal sexual behavior. (Mulryan) The child may not just have a
sexual behavior, sometimes sudden or extreme mood swings including sudden fear or
excessive crying can also happen. (Alic) In prolonged sexual abuse cases the child will
distrust adults. (Alic) The child can have low self esteem and feelings of worthlessness.
(Alic) If things get too extreme the child me contemplate suicide. In many cases things
have gone gotten to become extreme and the child will commit suicide.
Many children are abused throughout the entire world. Many children also
survive the child abuse.But it is estimated that 1,400 children died from child abuse and

76.1% of the children are under the age of four years old. (Mulryan) That is 1,065 kids
that died under the age of four years old because of child abuse. Because abuse
normally occurs within families, and often involves preverbal children many cases are
never discovered or even report. (Mulryan) One of the reasons that children are abused
by their parents is because when their parents were children they were abused
Themselves.(Mulryan) This is still no reason to beat your child in fact they of all people
should be able to know how bad child abuse is and how it can affect them later on in
life. The child can be affected by abuse emotionally by developing depression, phobias,
eating disorders, and sleep disturbances. (Mulryan) These can cause more problems
involving their physical health problems.Thing they can do to directly affect the health is
abusing drugs or alcohol, become aggressive or even attempt suicide. (Mulryan) Not
only can the child be affected mentally and physically child abuse can affect their
permanent criminal record. If a child abused there is an increased risk of a low
academic achievement, juvenile delinquency, an adult criminality. Abuse in girls/boys
childhood may also surface in adulthood in the form of stress for more severe then there
would normally be if she/he was not abused. As you can see child abuse is that the
child throughout their entire life.(Adams)
Physical abuse is when a parent or caretaker will beat the child repeatedly.
Normally the first person to recognize abuse is the health care providers for the child.
(Mulryan) This is because the child is repeatedly needing medical attention for
suspicious things like a circular burned shape that looks similar to a cigarette or
suspicious bruise that looks like a belt buckle.(Adams) Children that suffer from physical
child abuse will have a lot of bruises, burns, fractures, or lacerations. (Mulryan)

laceration are a deep cut or a tear in the skin or flesh. It doesn't just have to be the
appearance of the child that can send red flags because most children will try to cover
the scars but it can also be their behavior towards themselves, other children, adults
and strangers. The physical abuse that the child suffers threw can affect all the different
children in all different ways especially when the children are at different ages and
especially if the child doesn't know what is happening or why it is happening to them. A
young child can become weary or become clingy to strange adults they also become
upset if another child is crying. (Mulryan) A child who also has also been hit repeatedly
they become fearful of that specific adult even in public. A child that is older may
become fearful of adults. (Mulryan) Their tempers might change dramatically such as
passive and then withdraw too aggressive. (Mulryan) An adolescent child or a preteen
may exhibit abnormally antisocial behaviors such as truancy, running away from home,
stealing, or substance abuse. (Mulryan) Problems like these are much easier if you can
understand the child's emotional and social behaviour and the patterns of them. The
child may also be tired a lot because of difficulty sleeping mostly from nightmares.
(Screening) All of these can affect the children in negative ways and not just affect them
at home but at school today.
Some of these facts might have been startling to you I know they were for me. It
just goes to show you how lucky you are that you are not to have to put up with that. But
imagine this, You are 6 years old again. You have finally finished up washing the dishes
and are about to head to bed. Your mom is in the living room trying her hardest to put
everything in place before you dad gets home. Thats when the front door opens with a
bang! The stench of alcohol and smoke now suffocating you lungs. Your dad comes into

the kitchen and slams down a glass jug that shattered and let out more poisonous
fumes. You try not to but you look up you can see your fathers bloodshot eye boring into
you like hot metal. Your mother now seeing the glass everywhere scurries to clean it up.
She manages to clean it up without running into your dad or tripping and letting the
glass fly everywhere. She fearfully asks you dad if he wants something. Of course he
asks for another beer. Your mom asks if its good for him this late at night and that is
when he lost his temper. He turned around lightning fast, his fist came down on her like
a bolder she shrieks and falls to the floor you try to reach out for her but its too late. You
start to cry, your mother feverishly gets up to calm you down but she too is too late
cause your dads hand was already on its trip toward your face. You stare wide eyed,
scared, tho anticipating the pain and thats when it hit like a wildfire spreading thirstily
across your face and everything goes black.

Works Cited
Adams, Tim. "Abused Girls Have More Severe Reactions to Stress as Adults." SIRS Discoverer.
ProQuest, 1 Aug. 2000. Web. 28 Jan. 2015.

Alic, Margret. "Sexual Abuse." Health and Wellness Resource Center. Gale, n.d. Web. 29 Jan.
2015.
"Child Maltreatment -- Psychological/abuse." Health and Wellness Resource Center. Gale, 1
July 2014. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.
Fenandez, Hermenegila C. "Agony in Silence: Child Abusers Perpetrated by Teachers in
Selected Higher Education Instruction." Health and Wellness Resource Center. Gale,
Dec. 2012. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.
Gardner, Martin. "The False Memory Syndrome." General Reference Center Gold. Gale, Jan.Feb. 2015. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.
Mulryan, Kathleen, Patricia Cathers, and Alane Fagin. "How to Recognize and Respond to Child
Abuse." Elibrary. Mel, 01 Oct. 2004. Web. 28 Jan. 2015.
"Off Target;China." General Reference Center Gold. Gale, 10 Jan. 2015. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.
Penny, Laurie. "Will the Child Victims of Powerful Abusers Ever Get Justice or Just a Cover
Up?" General Reference Center Gold. Gale, 11 July 2014. Web. 28 Jan. 2015.
Penny, Laurie. "Will the Child Victims of Powerful Abusers Ever Get Justice or Just a Cover
Up?" General Reference Center Gold. Gale, 11 July 2014. Web. 28 Jan. 2015.
Penny, Laurie. "Will the Child Victims of Powerful Abusers Ever Get Justice or Just a Cover
Up?" General Reference Center Gold. Gale, 11 July 2014. Web. 28 Jan. 2015.
"(Screening):child Abuse." Health and Wellness Resource Center. Gale, 21 Aug. 2006. Web. 29
Jan. 2015.
Staff, SIRS. "Neglect and Abuse." SIRS Discoverer. ProQuest, Spring 1997. Web. 28 Jan. 2015.