Identifying Child Abuse

Abuse manifests itself in different forms. Some forms are easily visible while other forms remain unseen. It is our responsibility as organization members and leaders to know and understand how to identify abuse in its different forms.

Examples:

• Neglect – This includes depriving youth of food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and other essential necessities. It also includes careless or willful exposure of a child to harmful situations or the active failure to protect them from the same.
• Physical abuse – This refers to the intentional physical injury to a child by someone responsible for their care. This kind of abuse is usually visible and could include bruises, abrasions, cuts, burns, broken bones, or other obvious injuries. However, the damage cannot always be seen by the eye and may include internal injuries to joints, tendons, brain, genital area, soft tissue, and internal organs.
• Sexual abuse – This means forcing a child to perform sexual acts. The abuser can be either an adult or older youth who often has some kind of position of authority over the youth and who generally takes advantage of the youth’s trust. Common methods used by the abuser are grooming (questionable touching), emotional manipulation, threats, bribery, trickery, and coercion. Abusers generally respond to inquiries about inappropriate or unusual situations in a nonchalant way.
• Emotional abuse – This includes an ongoing course of intimidations, harassment, belittlement, disparaging comments, hate language, ridicule, humiliation, regular blame, continuously being picked on by peers, and bullying. Emotional abuse is equally as harmful and destructive as other forms of abuse and can have profound lifelong negative effects on the development of youth.

• Sources of Abuse
• Who Can Be a Molester?
• Signs of Abuse