Imagine for one moment that you are not yourself any longer. Visualize instead that you are a young girl; old enough to know right from wrong yet still young enough to be terrified by the dark shadows in your room. It is a cool autumn night and your parents have opted to attend a party which you are not allowed to go to. It will be fine,” they say.
Although you already know what is to come, your uncle comes over to watch you for the evening, and your parents are pleased by the fact that they do not have to find a sitter. As soon as he arrives, your mother kisses you on the cheek and scurries out the door to join your father already waiting in the car outside. The nightmare begins. His hands slide an ebony cartridge into the VCR as he smiles at you.
You can feel his eyes boring into your gaze every time he looks at you. You feel dirty and violated every time you think about what he does to you when you are alone. He walks over to the couch and sits down next to you. His hand slides onto your knee, and you cringe in revulsion. Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you,” he chides. Your mind feels panicky as he touches you in more intimate places, and you scream involuntarily.
His grip tightens as he places his hand over your mouth. We’ll have to do this the hard way!” comes his intense whisper. You flail your arms at him, but it doesn’t help. His massive body is on top of yours, and you feel so powerless. Eventually, you sink into a sobbing heap and simply wait for his passions to stop.
You wait for the nightmare to end. When he is done, you limp to the laundry room and try fruitlessly to get the blood stains out of your clothes. It is all your fault. Abuse is the violation or defilement of another person. What you have just experienced is one type of abuse that occurs millions of times every year across America.
Estimates of abuse vary depending on the source of information. According to Dolan (p. 3), one to two million children are victims of abuse each year. However, it is widely acknowledged that not all cases of child abuse are reported or even estimated. In fact, many cases go unreported, with less than 50% being reported by current estimates.
(Dolan p. 3) The amount of child abuse is staggering to think about, let alone deal with. By the age of eighteen, one in three girls will have been sexually molested and one in six boys will have been molested in that same time frame. Although, throughout this paper, we shall discuss not only the effects of sexual abuse but abuse in all its forms.
These include physical abuse, sexual abuse, mental abuse, and neglect. We will also touch upon the basic question of this report: How has child abuse changed over the last 100 years, and what effects has this had on the family? This brings us to our first research area: change. It is clear that families are undergoing a number of important structural changes. Families are smaller than in the past, with fewer children and sometimes with only one parent. Parents have children at a later age. More couples live together without the bonds of matrimony, which was accepted as a sacred bond so few years in human history. The source of this degradation of such a basic unit of society is unknown throughout all areas of research that I canvassed in my quest. It is a question that one person needs to answer for himself and solve for himself. Something a young child is not capable of doing.
Physical abuse has many forms. It may involve hitting or kicking a child with fists or feet, or with objects such as belts, shovels, chains, ropes, electric cords, leather straps, canes, baseball bats, sticks, broom handles, or assorted large objects. Other forms of abuse include pouring scalding water or coffee on a child’s body or holding a child’s head underwater.
