Child Abuse? Part 1

I realize that I may have stepped on a fireant hill by writing this article but I HAD TO. I wrote it a "tad too long" so I'm going to break it into two pieces. It is about child abuse in the deaf community. I wrote about it because of the issue of considering CIs for children as "child abuse." You're welcome to disagree with me; you have that right. Here we go.

Reading articles in newspapers and magazines and watching news on television yesterday, I was thinking, ‘Damn, is it me or are there an increase in child abuse (physical and/or sexual)?” There was a teacher sentenced to jail for molesting an 11 year old student. Also there was news about parents taken to trial for starving their 9-year old daughter. Foster parents putting their developmentally disabled children in cages. You get the idea. AND then reading entries by bloggers on Deafread about the hot topic of CI for children. I talked with two friends about the topic of child abuse today at lunch. We brought up three theories. Mind you, they are NOT facts, just theories we created.

A) Media pay more attention to reports of child abuse hence news. “MOM JAILED FOR HOMICIDE OF 4 CHILDREN” would get the reporter’s name noticed as well as the issue, than an article about pollution of a local river, methinks.

B) Child abuse is easier to recognize now. In other words, teachers, police, social workers, neighbors and relatives have sharper eyes than before, due to media that reports on child abuse and working with organizations that protect children.

C) Family issues weren’t much talked about in the past generations. Too many adults tell me that they didn’t talk to anyone else about the physical or sexual abuse they received from parents, siblings, relatives or caretakers not related to them. Why not? If no one talked about it, what were the children in 50’s to 80’s supposed to think? “We don’t talk about it, so you cannot bring it up.” is the main interpretation. Hence- now we have television commercials about child abuse as well as teachers and social workers talking with children “if anyone touch you without your permission, tell him NO. Inform us right away.” So there are more children willing to tell although not many. Many children feel that if they inform someone else, the family will be torn apart and the child will potentially feel it’s his fault then. (I know and you know that it wouldn’t be his fault, but that’s HOW the average child thinks.)

Now, looking at those three theories, I realized there are a connection between the theories A, B and C. Due to media reporting on child abuse, there is more attention to child abuse and the need to protect the children, THEN that’s when social workers, teachers and parents come in, especially if there are survivors among social workers, teachers and parents. Due to what children experienced in past generations, those adult survivors are being loud and putting the spotlight on child abuse, hence the media comes in…

However, there is a concern about overabuse (no pun on that word) of using the term “Child abuse.” A bruise on a child’s arm would be a red flag for child abuse; never mind that the child had gotten that bruise from playing football- and isn’t football tough? Often than not, due to certain health conditions, bones can be easily broken, there would be bruises from just a light touch and there can be also mental disorders such as a child banging her head on the wall for stimulation, or a teenager cutting herself to FEEL. Understandably there is SIB (Self injurious behavior), in which the child/adolescent/adult (more likely a female teenager) will hurt themselves on purpose to experience feelings or a release from feelings they encounter. SIB can be also a red flag because often than not, SIB occurs due to sexual abuse.

Sorry for going off the topic, the point is that there is a concern about overreacting to ‘possibility of child abuse.” One child of a friend I know had told her substitute teacher that her dad hit her. The school called for a social worker and cops! Guess what? There was no father in the picture. (Her dad died before she was born.) The child admitted to lying because she was angry that her mother won’t get her a pony for her birthday. You see? On the other hand, there was a child coming to school with bruises all over. The teachers paid no attention after he said that he got them all from falling down the stairs. He’d come to school with bruises now and then and no one took action. It was a new teacher coming in winter that asked him explicit questions such as “How did you get this bruise? When? Do you have stairs at home? How many steps?” and she stressed over and over that he is NOT in trouble and that she has his safety in mind. That’s when he opened up and admitted that it was his mother using a belt. So, to me, the quote “damned if you don’t, damned if you do” applies to the topic of child abuse.

Too many children out there are returned to parents that promise they won’t lay a hand on the child and then the child end up dead or furthermore injured either mentally or physically. There are also too many children taken away from parents who TRULY love them and wouldn’t dream of hurting them; the social workers don’t do their homework fully or the judge overreacts.
Thus ends the first part.