American child abuse epidemic...

C

chimpkin

C'mon, get happy!
Registered Senior Member
I was just going over to the BBC website to rest my brain and...sigh...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15288865

The above link will take you to a BBC documentary about the problem. A child is killed by their guardians in America every five hours on the average.

The Emma Thompson case is local to me, and there was a lot of local outrage at Child Protective Services.
CPS did not remove a 4-year old girl even though doctors reported her to have genital herpes...and later stated that a child being diagnosed with an STD was not sufficient reason to take a child into protective custody.

(Which I still have a WTF over)

This is copypasta'd from: http://www.childhelp.org/pages/statistics

General Statistics:
-A report of child abuse is made every ten seconds

-More than five children die every day as a result of child abuse.

-Approximately 80% of children that die from abuse are under the age of 4.

-It is estimated that between 50-60% of child fatalities due to maltreatment are not recorded as such on death certificates.

-More than 90% of juvenile sexual abuse victims know their perpetrator in some way.

-Child abuse occurs at every socioeconomic level, across ethnic and cultural lines, within all religions and at all levels of education.

-About 30% of abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children, continuing the horrible cycle of abuse.

-About 80% of 21 year olds that were abused as children met criteria for at least one psychological disorder.

-The estimated annual cost of child abuse and neglect in the United States for 2007 is $104 billion.
Click to expand...

graph-child-abuse-types.jpg


So...viewing this as a public health problem...it's doing a lot of damage. Yet we're not really paying much attention to it.
Why do you think this is so?
 
little shaking babies and drunkard all seem to agree.

Yeah . You might think there is something we as a group are missing. This is all to familiar .

And to think it is better than it use to be . Whoopy ! I bet the kids feel safe now . ( Joke ) It is a joke . A bad Joke .
Who was that guy that said child abuse don't hurt you ?
I am thinking we have tools that could change his mind .

I am going to walk away right now Chimpkin as my mad gets on and I don't like to be mad . I don't think it is healthy , , . There is a problem Huston . Not just America
 
What's even worse is that sometimes friends or relatives know about this or think something could be going on but never report it to the proper authorities. I do think however that we are seeing more people step forward today and report this kind of thing happening and better records are kept showing more cases about this problem as well. It does happen and has been happening over many centuries and it is caused from many psychological and emotional problems humans have that they cannot control so they take it out on the ones that won't do anything about the abuse.:mad:
 
What's even worse is that sometimes friends or relatives know about this or think something could be going on but never report it to the proper authorities.
Click to expand...

I think they just don't want to compute, honestly.

And if you'll notice the majority of cases are neglect...absence of care's harder to prove than presence of abuse.
My maternal uncle, his wife, their child and her four kids from a previous marriage stayed with us for a while. Later, they moved out and had their own apartment, and we went over to visit once or twice.

I vaguely remember noticing all the kids seemed sad and terrified of my uncle (I was about 14 at the time, I think). Yes, he probably was at least beating those kids, in retrospect.
At least.:bawl:
 
Last edited:
chimpkin said:
I think they just don't want to compute, honestly.

And if you'll notice the majority of cases are neglect...absence of care's harder to prove than presence of abuse.
My maternal uncle, his wife, their child and her four kids from a previous marriage stayed with us for a while. Later, they moved out and had their own apartment, and we went over to visit once or twice.

I vaguely remember noticing all the kids seemed sad and terrified of my uncle (I was about 14 at the time, I think). Yes, he probably was at least beating those kids, in retrospect.
At least.:bawl:
Click to expand...

To be honest i question that pie chart, is it sustained cases or an atempt at acurate figures? Because from my own resurch in this area psycological and emotional abuse are the most common (in conjuntion with neglect) but the hardest to prove. Most other forms of abuse come in conjuntion with psycological and emotional abuse. Also "neglect" can come in different forms, it can simply be an inability to cope for some reason (be it finantial or emotional) and in alot of cases this SHOULD be the easiest area for child care workers to effect by providing aditional surport. It may simply be a case of providing some aditional finantial aid or infomation or even practical assistance such as a cleaner or aditional child care and there is no reason to even concider removing the child.

Sadly it seems here alot of times its left to the health care industry to pick up the slack for the community sector because its consitantly under funded. I wonder if that backup even exists in the US because your system doesnt provide free health care, sure it shouldnt be a GPs (or an ambos) roll to identify a parent who simply isnt coping and trying to get them surport but SOMEONE has to do it and its better that health does it than NO ONE doing it.

My personal belife is that even physical abuse can be avoided sometimes is surport is provided early and without judgment. How many cases of shaken baby for instance are caused because "i just couldnt get him\her to stop crying". The parenting help line and www.raisingchildren.net.au are great ideas to try and counter this but DOCs et al need to be resorced to help these families too rather than just the catigory A (or 1 or whatever) cases which is all they currently have the staff and resorces to deal with and if they cant then maybe another sub department should be created specifically to target these cases, possibly under the department of education or health if not under family services.
 
To be honest i question that pie chart, is it sustained cases or an atempt at acurate figures? Because from my own resurch in this area psycological and emotional abuse are the most common (in conjuntion with neglect) but the hardest to prove.
Click to expand...

I question it too.
No, it's not clear where those figures are pulled from.
If pulled from reported and sustained cases...or estimated actual cases, which is going to be far greater.

Kids who are maltreated don't tell; they either assume all little kids get maltreated the same way, or they are ashamed of what's going on.
Abused kids almost universally feel they are at fault.
 
Grave, tragic situation. Endemic of deep rooted psychological issues. Makes you wish the world would stop and everyone would get off and not get back on without treatment.
 
well i think it is easier for an abused person to be more aware of possible abuse. See them selves in mannerisms and such . Emotional abuse seem an extremely hard thing to prove seeing how the system is abusive it self .

I mean who gets in trouble for calling there child stupid . If people understood what that really does to a child self esteem they wouldn't do it anymore . Self fulfilled prophecy . I would hurt a person if anyone ever said that to one of my children . Hurt em bad . There self esteem with be in the gutter . My Dad is a bad offender and I tell you what he got his heart handed to him on a platter more than once for even insinuating about my children or my wife . So you can imagine if some one not so close would get . I will fuck you up so don't go there and don't do it to your own kids either . They will fuck you up for Me latter

Like Mary says you teach your children and they will teach you too . Whether you like it or not and you may not like the maturing experience either
 
Last edited:
The pie chart on the original link is likely representative of the types of abuse substantiated (as I understand it). From link:

Over 3 million reports of child abuse are made every year in the United States; however, those reports can include multiple children. In 2009, approximately 3.3 million child abuse reports and allegations were made involving an estimated 6 million children
Click to expand...

The above comes from this report:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm09/cm09.pdf

My interpretation of the above pdf:

Around 2.5 mill reports are made. Of the 2.5 million over 900K are immediately filed as unsubstantiated. That leaves approx 1.6 million that are followed up on.

Of that 1.6 million, another 1.2 million are classified as unsubstantiated. Leaving a little over 400K cases (may include multiple children) that fall under one of the abuse statistics (one child may include more than one type of maltreatment) in the pie chart.

On page 21, the rate of substantiated maltreatment is 10.1 victims per 1,000 children.

IMO the rate of maltreatment has declined dramatically since I was a kid, when the primary goal of preventing abuse involved only getting people to stop beating their kids with belts/sticks/hands to the current fluid definitions of psychological maltreatment and other neglect. For example, defining ages and length of time kids can watch themselves. Not so long ago, you could be investigated for neglect for leaving your 10 year old home alone for 2 hours, where now the guideline is more relaxed.
 
When I was a young man, the little girl that lived next door to the house I rented showed up in her yard one day with great big bloody welts on her head that were for sure from being hit with something hard. I went over and knocked on the door and her mom answered. She had a black eye and broken lip, was pretty bruised up as well. She said that both she and her daughter had 'fallen down'. Yeah. I was sure it was the live - in boyfreind who drank pretty heavy and acted like a real tough guy, so I called the po on his arse.

They stopped by and talked to him, did nothing and went away. The next time, I skipped the po and had a little chat with Mr Arsehole myself. Things were pretty quiet over there after, as long as I lived next door. Don't know how they fared after I moved to Detroit. Now, things would go a lot different for sure. :D

I would most likely be beaten up by the po and arrested for verbal assault on the bff.

..."i just couldnt get him\her to stop crying"...
Click to expand...

When my son was real little and got into a crying fit, I was rocking him in my arms, but he wouldn't stop crying and it bothered me quite a bit. I put on a set of sound - proofing ear cover head gear and just kept gently rocking him with a big smile on my face. He stopped and looked at me with great curiosity, so I took the head gear off and put it on him so he could understand what it did. He understood, then started crying again. I put the head gear back on and smiled at him. He quit crying again and I took the gear off. I told him that I would leave it off if he quit crying, but his crying hurt my ears so if he went back to it I would put the gear on so his crying wouldn't bother me. That was the end of that behavior, save for a temper tantrum he threw when he was 2 year old due to his staying up real late one night (in his bed as an act of self - determination or testing the boundaries).

Bin Laden was an adult survivor of extreme and repeated child abuse. I rather suspect that much of the emotion that powered his actions came from that. We create monsters when we abuse children. Pedophiles create pedophiles when they do what they do to children. Our world would be a lot nicer place to live in if we could stop this madness.
 
Stoniphi said:
Bin Laden was an adult survivor of extreme and repeated child abuse. I rather suspect that much of the emotion that powered his actions came from that.
Click to expand...
Do you have a source for this? I wouldnt call bin Laden a survivor, rather an product of an extreme self-imposed idealism. As I understand it, bin Laden lived a relative life of luxury and chose to abandon his wealthy lifestyle for fundamentalism. However, I am always suspect of the motives of those who choose to model their lifestyle after a self-percieved power figure. A megalomania psychology or possibly grandiose delusions. I have no idea whether he was abused.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_life_of_Osama_bin_Laden
 
Apparently this rather disturbing video has gone viral...either the daughter turned the webcam on or it just accidentally got left on...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0drbwtv6c-w

Monsters don't usually have witnesses. I think widespread denial plays a giant role in what goes on. Nobody wants to suspect it's that bad.
Most children assume they deserve everything their parents do to them.
 
chimpkin said:
Apparently this rather disturbing video has gone viral...either the daughter turned the webcam on or it just accidentally got left on...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0drbwtv6c-w

Monsters don't usually have witnesses. I think widespread denial plays a giant role in what goes on. Nobody wants to suspect it's that bad.
Most children assume they deserve everything their parents do to them.
Click to expand...

Yeah and they think that is the way it is and some then adopt the behavior as there roll model . Like drunks breeding drunks .
Wide spread and not approached because of the denial .
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top