Childhood Child Abuse

Child abuse is one of the most troubling problems within our society, and the term “abuse” entails so many different horrifying scenarios. Although this problem is on the forefront of every law enforcement agencies agenda, it has long been one that many found hard to confront. However, it is more evident now than ever the amount of attention that the abuse of children demands. In recent times, there have been many instances of child abuse, some of which are almost too horrendous fathom. The most sobering realization is that this crime is one that spans every facet of our society. Abuse is also a problem which is handed down, generation to generation, amongst families. Abusers are not always inherently bad, and they don’t always have specifically …show more content…
Easily one of the most jarring examples of child abuse many of us will ever hear about in our lives is the case of Warren Jeffs. Jeffs was finally convicted in 2011 of the sexual abuse of countless young children, including some of his own family members, which brought an end to decades of victimization within the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, Texas. This case was particularly revolting because this man was able to abuse so many people under the guise of his religious beliefs, and because this religious group was so isolated, it took years to build a case against him. The reporting on this situation brought to light how enormous this problem can become, and we can no longer pretend the problem doesn’t exist this close to our communities. Warren Jeffs was literally in our backyards. Another case, this time of physical abuse, involved football player Adrian Peterson. It is alleged that he has used a switch to punish his four-year-old son, and had left lacerations over a large part of the child’s body. This form of punishment was reportedly the same form Peterson’s parents had used on him as a child. Though he may have punished his child in the best way he knew how to, it is undeniable that he may have taken the punishment too far. While we realize that abuse is subjective in terms of culture, there are standards that are agreed upon across the board in which we place our …show more content…
Though these are the most widely seen, these are not the only signs of a child who is being mistreated. Physically abused children often can be very jumpy, almost as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. They may even wince at sudden movements, appear very skittish, or seem developmentally delayed. Many times a young child will not come forward in the case of abuse committed by a parent, because it is the child’s understanding that this was a deserved punishment for misbehaving. The cycle of physical abuse continues because of this, many times with adults growing to feel that the way they were punished as children is the correct way to handle such situations. This was illustrated by a brief scenario by Brandt F Steele in the book The Battered Child, in which he gives the reader a brief explanation of two boys who had been admitted into the hospital with severe burns on their hands. “Two boys, one two-and-a-half and the other four…. told us how their father had burned them for playing with matches after being told not to. Their father readily admitted to doing it and said it was the best method of dealing with such misbehavior.” The father then proceeded to explain that as a child, his mother used the same method of punishment to address this misbehavior, and that, in fact, he had used the same lighter to punish his children as was used