Child Abuse Overview and Types

Child Abuse Overview

• Child abuse negatively affects a child's physical and psychological well-being.
• It encompasses actions taken by adults, the community, and the state.
• Abuse is an act of commission (doing something wrong).
• Neglect is an act of omission (not doing something right).

Types of Abuse

• Physical abuse: Any act by a caregiver resulting in a non-accidental physical injury to a child. This includes striking, kicking, burning, biting, and any action causing physical impairment. Examples provided demonstrate different forms of physical abuse, including a parent injuring a child for misbehaving, excessive shaking, and deliberate actions to cause injury or harm. Further details are included about the characteristics of physical injuries associated with mistreatment versus those occurring from accidents, and indicators to differentiate the two. Specific examples, including hitting with hands or objects, slapping and punching, kicking, shaking, throwing, poisoning, burning, scalding, biting, scratching, breaking bones, and drowning are highlighted.

• Emotional abuse/Psychological Maltreatment: Any behavior harming a child's emotional integrity and development. The abuse may involve emotionally absent behavior, a lack of affection, constant criticism, blaming without support, name-calling, humiliating behavior and/or making fun of the child. Examples and further descriptions of this form of abuse are included. A framework describing categories of parental behaviors constituting psychological maltreatment is also presented. This includes actions such as ignoring, spurning, verbal/nonverbal hostility, terrorizing the child, exploiting/corrupting the child, denying emotional responsiveness, isolating the child, and/or neglecting the mental/health/educational needs of the child. There is further information outlining the indicators and behaviors of emotional abuse/psychological maltreatment

• Economic Abuse: "Child labor" is work that deprives children of their childhood and development, and is harmful; it includes work that is harmful to children mentally, physically, socially or morally, and/or work that interferes with a child's schooling. The causes of economic abuse are also presented and include social, economic and/or cultural problems, unequal income distribution, poverty, and lack of resources

• Media abuse: These are publications made in a way that negatively affect the child's health, mental, and moral development; by neglecting the child's privacy, prioritizing profit, and children as news sources/viewers.

• Sexual abuse: Any sexual activity with a child where consent is not or cannot be given. This includes contacts or interactions where a child is used for the sexual stimulation of the perpetrator or another person. A person under 18 can be a perpetrator if they are significantly older than the victim or in a position of power. This includes descriptions and examples of non contact: sexy talk, exposure, voyeurism and sending sexual explicit messages, as well as contact sexual abuse involving sexual touching, including sexual touching of intimate body parts (genitals, breasts), fondling, and frottage. A distinction between contact and non contact sexual abuse is made, which includes examples of sexual exploitation like child pornography (pictures/videos of children), child prostitution (children used for sexual services) and other forms of sexual victimization.

Consequences of Abuse

• Physical abuse can result in medical complications, cognitive difficulties, behavioral problems, socioemotional deficits, and various psychiatric disorders.
• Children who experience sexual abuse may experience medical/neurobiological complications, cognitive difficulty, behavioral problems, and socio-emotional deficits, resulting in anxiety, depression, sleep/eating disorders, and other psychiatric disorders, etc.

Indicators of Abuse

• Indicators of physical abuse: unexplained injuries/wounds/bruises, inconsistencies in injury explanations, bruises in various stages of healing, bruises at specific locations (e.g., faces, ears, necks, buttocks, chests, thighs, back of legs, and genitalia), injury patterns that don't fit the given explanations, signs of injuries caused by objects (burns, etc.).
• Indicators of emotional abuse: extreme aggression/passivity, flinching easily, avoidance of touch; abusive behavior/talk during play, inability to recall how injuries occurred, inconsistency between accounts of injuries, fear of parent/caregiver, unusual/inappropriate clothing, and/or difficulties regulating emotions and expressing oneself.
• Indicators of sexual abuse: difficulties walking/sitting, pain/swelling/redness/bleeding in the genital/lip/mouth/anal area, pain in urination, sexually transmitted disease diagnosis, physical complaints, and/ or excessive needs to clean or neglect of cleaning, developing baby-immature behaviors, playing sexually explicit games, demonstrating sexual knowledge above developmental level, school and discipline/attention/tantrum problems.

Characteristics of Adults Who Abuse Children

• Adults who physically abuse children often exhibit emotional and behavioral difficulties: anger control/expression, depression, low frustration tolerance, low self-esteem, rigidity, and deficits in empathy and problem-solving skills, and/or perceived life stress. Biological/medical health issues may also impact abuse perpetration.
• Family/interpersonal difficulties include parental dysfunction, criminal history, drug/alcohol abuse, limited supervision/monitoring, family characteristics of secretiveness, poor communication, discord, violence, isolation, poverty, etc.
• Difficulties with parenting include unrealistic expectations, disregard for children's needs/abilities, poor problem-solving skills when interacting with children, intrusive/inconsistent parenting, low levels of communication, high rates of aggression, and/or a parental view of the parenting role as stressful.

Additional Information

• Munchausen by proxy syndrome (MPS) is a rare form of child abuse in which a caretaker fabricates, exaggerates, or induces symptoms of physical/psychological illness in a child.
• Definitions of child sexual abuse (CSA) often include broad definitions of abuse, involving both physical contact and non-contact, such as extrafamilial and intrafamilial abuse.
• CSA definitions emphasize the adult's exploitation of authority, knowledge, and power, recognizing that children are often not capable of fully consenting.