Broken Angels
As you are sitting in the living room watching television, you hear that familiar sound.
You hear the yelling, the remorse, and the crying. If you listen past all of that, you can hear a child’s voice pleading for their life. Child abuse affects a child’s life in more ways than one can imagine including physically and psychologically. In order to fully understand what child abuse is you must go into the statistics of the actual concept. Child abuse is physically, emotionally, or verbally harming a child.
When a parent or any legal adult is mistreating a child it is necessary to get certain attention brought to the situation. (“Child Abuse and Neglect Statistics”) A Childs mind is extremely vulnerable; child abuse is disturbingly very real and is affecting our youth. During the late 1980’s the absurdly high amount of investigations were put through in scenarios of child abuse. 135,573 investigations were being conducted. (Healthyplace.com) The main side effects of child abuse are anxiety, depression, dissociation, difficulty concentrating, academic problems in school-aged children and adolescents, withdrawn and/or difficulty connecting with others, flashbacks, increased hyper vigilance. Hyper Vigilance is a state of sensory sensitivity whose purpose is to detect threats. These kind of traumatizing situations scar a child’s life for the. Of all the children that were reported to have been abused or neglected in 2013, nearly 80% were neglected, 18% were physically abused, and 9% were sexually abused. To add to the disgrace, more than 20% of these victims were under the age of 3 years old.
56% were over the age of ten(“Child Abuse and Neglect Statistics”). A child is put in jeopardy when they are abused in any sort. These kinds of abusive motives could lead to developmental disabilities, socializing problems, depression or suicide attempts, and teen pregnancy. The victim rate was highest for children under the age of 1 year. In 2014 1520 children died because abuse.
That would indicate that 4 children die every day because of this abuse. The more sickening part is that more than 91% of children being abused are abused by one or both of their parents (“Child Abuse and Neglect Statistics”). If you question “How many children get abused in the United States?” the answer is simple but difficult to answer. Unfortunately not all child abuse cases get reported to Child Protective Services (CPS) agencies. As a result, the number that is presented to you likely under represents the actual amount of children that are abused.According to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDA) whose latest reports are from the year 2005, about 3.
3 million referrals were given out by CPS. Out of those referrals 890,000 of them were made out to child victims who were abused or neglected (Beitchman et al.) Child abuse is a worldwide problem and has been questioned on how and why abuse happens. To clear the air and the most repetitive question will be appointed. To a child the word “abuse” is usually known for any action that involves physical threat.
Elaborating on the word abuse is has a lot more meaning than just physical threats. The dictionary definition of the word abuse is “A•buse: treat (a person or an animal) with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly” (“Abuse – Dictionary Definition”). There is a fine line that has to be crossed when a parent is giving their child discipline and actually harming the child. Maltreatment can take up in many forms. A child could be verbally, physically, sexually, emotionally, or neglect.The life of a child can be easily manipulated by a mad and disgustingly driven adult.
Children are being abused every day behind lock doors. A child cries their selves to sleep hoping one day someone could hear their shouts for help. They are forever scarred and they lose their childhood due to these events.
