Child abuse is the intentional, unexplainable infliction of physical, moral, and sexual pain and suffering on a child. It is caused mainly by parents who were maltreated as children themselves. Causes also include stress, poverty, or unemployment.
Child abuse consists of various different causes, types, and cases. There are many causes for child abuse, but some project over the rest. In some cases’ children are mistreated when parents or guardians have bad responses to stressful situations or feel powerless. They may hit someone with even less power than they, and these are often children. Because children with disabilities create more stress, they are more likely to be abused. Alcohol was said to be involved in fourteen percent of the cases of abuse and in eighteen and a half percent of the cases of neglect.
Approximately eighty percent of the child-abusers were themselves abused as children. A high percentage of abusing parents feel that they are exercising their parental right. The parents do this to their offspring hoping that the child will change a manner or learn a lesson. There is a higher percentage rate of mistreatment in families with mixed religion marriages. Very often it is a small pressure that finally makes a parent explode. It is most likely that the abuser is employed only part-time or is jobless.
Retired men and women are the least likely to harm a child. Physical violence is more common in poor families, families living under stress or parents who suffered cruelty as children. Types of abuse also can change. This includes only moral, physical and sexual abuse.
The kind of abuse varies depending on the age of the victim. Infant and preschool children are more likely to suffer fractures, burns and bruises. Schooled aged or adolescent females are more likely to suffer from sexual molestation, but there are a recently growing number of sexual abuses of preschool and male victims. The abusers are usually men. The neglect is the physical or emotional harm resulting from parents’ failure to provide children with adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education or morals. Other types of abuse include unreasonable physical violence, verbal abuse, failure to provide proper shelter, foodstuffs, medical treatment or emotional support, incest, sexual molestation or rape.
Slaps and spankings are viewed by parents as a part of raising a child. However, childless individuals are more likely to view slapping and spanking as necessary, normal, and good. Slaps and spankings are or are not child abuse depending on the person who views it. Types of abuse vary incredibly. There are many cases of abuse. In New York City approximately two children are killed by abuse per week.
Specific cases include one of a twenty-eight-year-old mother who killed her three-year old adoptive son of a fatal beating in Wyandach, Long Island. There are thousands of these cases, but one that really stands out is that of Elisa Izquierdo. She was conceived in a homeless shelter and was born in 1989 addicted to crack. Elisa was a good student at school, and was loved by everyone. As soon as she was born, she was custody to her father Gustavo Izquierdo. Gustavo was a wonderful father until he died of cancer in 1993.
Elisa’s mother Awilda was a crack addict. In 1990, she had supposedly given up drugs, married Carlos Lopez, and settled at a permanent address. Because of this, Awilda was assigned unsupervised visitation rights in 1991. When Gustavo died, she immediately filed for permanent custody. Awilda was backed up by her lawyer from the and many legal aid societies, and project chance. She was granted full custody.
Carlos beat both Elisa and Awilda, which helped Awilda go back to drugs. Elisa began telling people that her mother had locked her in a closet. The teachers an neighbors started suspecting abuse when they saw that Elisa was bruised and having trouble walking. The CWA was warned various times of her abuse. The first was the very same day she was born, February 11, 1989.
The second was a phone call from the Montessori principal offering teachers observation notes. Elisa’s public school 26 reported the matter directly to a deputy director of CWA”s Manhattan field division informing them of
