Child Abuse and Neglect

Forensic Issues in Evidence, Impact and Management

India Bryce, Yolande Robinson, Wayne Petherick, India Bryce, Yolande Robinson, Wayne Petherick

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780128153451
• Topic: Droit
• Subtopic: Science médico-légale

Child Abuse and Neglect: Forensic Issues in Evidence, Impact and Management provides an overview of all aspects of child abuse and neglect, approaching the topic. from several viewpoints. First, child abuse is considered from both victimization and offending perspectives, and although empirical scholarship informs much of the content, there is applied material from international experts and practitioners in the field—from policing, to child safety and intelligence. The content is presented to align with university semester timetables in three parts, including 1) Typologies, methods and platforms for abuse, 2) Impacts and prevention, and (3) Issues surrounding recognition and management of child abuse.

This book fills a void in the available university-level classroom-targeted literature, promoting the inclusion of child abuse as a standalone subject within university curricula. As such, readership includes undergraduate and postgraduate students, teachers and wider scholarship, as well as practitioners; including those from psychology, criminology, criminal justice and law enforcement.

• Presents an up-to-date approach that tackles child abuse from several viewpoints
• Includes typologies, risk and protective factors, recognition, responses, biopsychosocial outcomes, public policy, prevention, institutional abuse, children and corrections, treatment and management, and myths and fallacies
• Provides information on significant advances in knowledge areas, such as disclosure, the neurological effects of child abuse and neuroplasticity, and online and virtual child abuse

Part 1

Types of Child Abuse

Chapter 1

Child Abuse: Types and Emergent Issues

Yolande Robinson Griffith Criminology Institute, Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia

Abstract

The identification of child abuse as an individual, social, health, educational, and forensic concern is very ‘present-orientated’, having moved well beyond the 1962 ‘discovery’ by Kempe and associates of the child battering syndrome. Since that time, a burgeoning literature examining child abuse has expanded our understanding of types, onset and desistance, outcomes and management strategies, and a vast array of forensic issues and considerations. The current chapter acts as a foundation of sorts, for characterising overarching classifications of child abuse; provides estimations of rates; and presents contemporaneous issues facing modern scholarship.

Keywords

Child abuse; Child neglect; Child emotional abuse; Child physical abuse; Child sexual abuse; Abuse types

1 Introduction

Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered, and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit; for such mutilation undercuts the life principle of trust, without which every human act, may it feel ever so good, and seem ever so right, is prone to perversion by destructive forms of consciousness.

Densen-Gerber & Hutchinson (1979, p. 61)

The identification of child abuse as an individual, social, health, educational, and forensic concern is very ‘present-orientated’, having moved well beyond the first prosecuted child abuse case in the United States in 1874 and the ‘discovery’ by Kempe and associates of the battered-child syndrome (Corby, 2006, p. 8; Kempe, Silverman, Steele, Droegemueller, & Silver, 1962). Indeed, it was only in the early 1980s that sexual abuse of children was first formally identified in Britain, and until just a few decades ago, empirical, legal, welfare, and treatment concerns surrounding child abuse and neglect were narrowly focussed on intrafamilial abuse, specifically in the forms of physical and emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect, with sexual abuse at that time being considered rare (Corby, 2006; Negriff, Schneiderman, Smith, Schreyer, & Trickett, 2014).

Since these early developments, the scope of child-protection-focussed research and practice continues to expand, with other forms of child abuse and their aetiologies, victim/offender typologies, and prevalence rates well documented (Negriff et al., 2014). From the 1990s, media- and research-driven enquiry into organised sexual abuse and commercial exploitation of children, particularly within institutional settings and via the Internet, has increased exponentially, casting a blazing light on the nature, extent, and consequences for victims of these abuse settings and modus operandi (Corby, 2006). Likewise, foetal abuse, as a form of child abuse, is another area attracting significant attention. Here, a variety of disciplines including sociology, neuropsychology, criminal justice, and law are examining appropriate responses to a plethora of reported negative outcomes over the life course for children exposed to domestic violence and substance misuse in utero (Kelly, 2014).

There are, of course, overlaps in the types and impacts of child abuse, where a child might be neglected and physically and/or sexually abused or might be emotionally and sexually abused. Furthermore, one abuse type can include a variety of acts. For example, Shevlin and colleagues identified, modelled, and measured 18 different contact and noncontact child sexual abuse acts such as the following: questioned about own sexuality, kissed and fondled in a certain way, teased about sexual development, had to present own genitals to someone else, had to masturbate while someone was watching, and had genital intercourse. Indeed, inconsistencies in estimates of abuse across scholarship may well be the result of inconsistent definitions and restrictive measurements of child abuse across domains, jurisdictions, and scientific methods of enquiry (Shevlin, Murphy, Elklit, Murphy, & Hyland, 2018; Stoltenborgh, van IJzendoorn, Euser, & Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2011).

Although research attests to the importance of recognising the emotional impact of all forms of abuse of a child, identifying types of abuse in a systematic and exhaustive manner can assist practitioners and scholars to more closely examine and accurately identify outcomes and specific risk profiles (Shevlin et al., 2018). To illustrate this point, a wide literature reports psychological outcomes of child sexual abuse (as an overarching type of abuse) to include posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, suicide ideation, and difficulties in forming and maintaining positive social and intimate relationships into adulthood. However, as discrete characteristics within abuse types are expanded, evidence also suggests that psychological outcomes can vary according to the duration, severity, type of abuse, and the relationship of the perpetrator to the target (Briere & Elliott, 2003; Kendall-Tackett, 2012; Shevlin et al., 2018).

With a key goal of Child Abuse and Neglect: Forensic Issues in Evidence, Impact, and Management being to influence treatment perspectives and efficacy, the importance of a comprehensive approach to classifying discrete forms of child abuse cannot be overstated and is certainly a challenge for child abuse research. Careful consideration of characteristics, patterns, and cooccurrences of various types of child abuse offending may serve to strengthen the validity of empirical questions and hypotheses (that might include, for instance, risk profiles) and improve the reliability of measured outcomes (such as responses to treatment). Therefore, this chapter expands upon the most commonly reported and examined types of abuse, those being physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse, and adds to this list violations of Internet predation, foetal abuse, and witnessing family violence. Although these might not be deemed subtypes within their own right, they bear inclusion within the types being discussed. For instance, Internet child sexual abuse is now included as a subcategory of sexual abuse along with rape and sexual assault. Likewise, witnessing family violence is included as a form of emotional abuse due to the effects of exposure to family violence and persistent discord on a child’s perception of appropriate behavioural boundaries and overall cognitive and social development. These additions reflect both the burgeoning changes in communications relating to the Internet and the recognition of the deleterious effects of Internet predation, substance abuse, and family violence.

Overarching typologies are presented in alphabetical order so as not to suggest a more profound significance or measure of harm for one form of abuse over another, as child abuse in any form, duration, and level of severity has the potential for serious and life-long consequences for children and as such is, individually and collectively, a major public health concern.

2 Emotional Abuse

Much like neglect, research into the developmental outcomes for children who have experienced psychological/emotional abuse has lagged behind research on childhood physical and sexual abuse (Taillieu, Brownridge, Sareen, & Afifi, 2016; Trickett, Kim, & Prindle, 2011). Emotional abuse can be defined as ‘a repeated pattern of caregiver behavior or extreme incident(s) that convey to children that they are flawed, unloved, unwanted, endangered, or of value only in meeting another’s needs’ (American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC), 1995, p. 2). Whether this type of abuse should be termed emotional or psychological is open to debate (Glaser, 2002, p. 698), since cognition and emotion are necessarily dependent on each other, where ‘cognitive appraisal of experiences contribute to the affective experience and vice versa’. Scholarship generally identifies two subtypes of emotional abuse: acts of commission (emotional abuse) and acts of omission (emotional neglect) (Coates & Messman-Moore, 2014; Ferguson & Dacey, 1997; Taillieu et al., 2016). The APSAC (1995) describes six indicators of emotional abuse: spurning (verbal and nonverbal hostile rejecting/degrading); terrorising (behaviour that threatens or is likely to physically harm the child or place the child or the child’s loved objects in danger); exploiting/corrupting (encouraging the child to develop inappropriate behaviours); denying emotional responsiveness (ignoring child’s needs to interact, failing to express positive affect to the child, and showing no emotion in interactions with the child); isolating (denying child opportunities for interacting/communicating with peers or adults); and mental, health, medical, and educational neglect (ignoring or failing to ensure provision for the child’s needs) (APSAC, 1995, as cited in Glaser 2002, p. 702).

Across a wide literature, similar estimates of experiencing emotional abuse in childhood lie at around 15% (Finkelhor, Turner, Ormrod, & Hamby, 2009), with a study by Taillieu and colleagues (2013) finding that around 6% of respondents experienced emotional neglect only and 5% experienced emot...