Child Abuse

Child Abuse
Sarah Broge
April, 14, 2010
4 Johann

Child Abuse

Every single day we go through the same routine. Many of us want something interesting to happen. We don’t know that we are the lucky ones, whose days are boring. Children all around are being abused and even they can tell you that their days are never boring.

Child abuse has been going on for centuries. Back in the 1800’s, the earliest report of child abuse was filed. Children have been sold into slavery for millennia, sent to wet-nurse where many of them died, beaten very severely and frequently by parents, teachers, priests and bosses who used leather thongs, whips, belts, switches and canes. Children have been routinely swaddled nightly, rendered unable to move and develop their motor skills and explore their environment. Children were frequently tortured by mutilation, freezing, burning, shaking, throwing, branding, hot wax, and by dipping in cold water. Children, most often little girls, have been intentionally and systematically malnourished. Children were and still are left unsupervised. The daughter of Cotton Mather fell into a fire when she was left alone. An 18th century physician said that "almost one half of the human species perish in infancy by improper management and neglect".

One of the methods used to terrorize children and force obedience is through the horror stories told to them, which include threats that ghosts, monsters, god and the devil are out to GET them, torture them, cook and eat them alive. Bogie men lurk in every closet and under every little bed. The tales by the Brothers Grimm as well as the words to most songs and rhymes told to children often include plague, torture, rape and the capture and murder of children. To this day adults seem to take great pleasure in terrifying kids with masks and stories and monster sounds. The real Bogie Men are the adults who harm children. In the past children were taken to hangings and to see corpses to frighten them into obedience. During The Burning Times, the children of accused witches were made to watch their parents being burned at the stake, and were often severely whipped while they witnessed these brutal murders.

There have been many ways to try and prevent child abuse. In 1983, a petition was created and finally was passed to decree that April would become National Child Abuse Prevention Month. But, still one out of three kids in the U.S. is abused every day. Some don’t even make it to the age of 15. Whatever the United States and the government do is worth nothing to the children that are getting abused. They have no help from the outside world because their parents keep them isolated or frighten them so much that they are afraid to even say a word. There are many physical signs that a child is being abused. They have bruises or welts shaped like an object, bruises in unusual places, and burns in the shape of an object, rope burns on ankles or wrists and adult sized bite marks, are signs of physical abuse. Emotional side effects can be noticed also. If someone is apathetic, if they are depressed most of the time, if they won’t take part in small activities, and if they are hostile or aggressive suddenly, are all signs are emotional affects from abuse.One in three girls and one in five boys are sexually abused by an adult at some time during childhood. Families with four or more children have higher rates of abuse and neglect, especially if their living conditions are crowded or they live in isolated areas. More than 80 percent of abusers are a parent or someone close to a child. One in thirteen kids with a parent on drugs is physically abused regularly. One out of ten babies born today are born to mothers who are abusing drugs. So many different ways of abuse have the same outcome. Those outcomes are mental or physical deformity when they are older or premature death.

So much abuse is going on and we don’t even realize it’s going on. What have we become? What has America turned into?