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Child Abuse Essay

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By definition, child abuse is the deliberate physical maltreatment or sexual molestation of a child by a caretaker. Hitting, beating, slamming against a wall, burning, and in severe cases, even killing. Why would anyone want to purposely hit an innocent child? While this is a question that many people wonder child abuse is actually more common than most people think. Every year more than 3.6 million referrals are made to child protection agencies with reports of child abuse. I argue throughout this paper that child abuse is a major social problem that obviously needs to be prevented. This paper begins by defining the different types of child abuse to inform the reader. Secondly the paper will state some common signs and symptoms of …show more content…

Physical abuse victims suffer acts of extreme violence such as being hit, kicked, punched, burned, or slapped. Physical abuse is likely accompanied by at least one of the other four forms of abuse as well. Emotional abuse is the most common type of abuse in children. Emotional abuse is the ongoing emotional mistreatment of children. Emotional abuse can really damage a child’s self-esteem, and development. There are many different ways a child can be emotionally abused. Samantha Gluck states “Psychological abuse of a child is a pattern of intentional verbal or behavioral actions or lack of actions that convey to a child the message that he or she is worthless, flawed, unloved, unwanted, endangered, or only of value to meet someone else's needs. Withholding emotional support, isolation, or terrorizing a child are forms of psychological abuse” (Gluck, 2016). Emotional child abuse can come in the form of rejection when the caregiver rejects the child and makes them feel useless and unwanted, humiliation, terrorism by threatening a child with physical violence, isolation, or exposure to domestic abuse. Surprisingly, emotional abuse can actually have a longer lasting impact on children than other forms of abuse, such as physical or sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is a wide range of actions between a child and an adult. All sexual touching between an adult and a child is considered sexual

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