Sigala 1

Sommer Sigala

Mrs. Litle

Eng 121.003

10 April 2018

Child Abuse

Nearly 700,000 children are abused in the U.S annually (National

Children’s Alliance). Child abuse is a big setback to children from the ages 0-18. Child abuse is

all over the world and has increased tremendously over the years. Does that mean we have been

taking it too lightly, or even not enforcing the laws of child abuse? There have been many

incidents where children speak up and prove they have been abused by someone and no one has

done anything about it. A child’s abuser has been proven to be someone you’re close to like a

family member or a close friend. An abuser can be anywhere near your child or among you. The

Current system of protecting abused kids is not good enough because it's too slow to process

cases, and too many children suffer prolonged abuse or die.

There are many other viewpoints to this topic to try and fix the system. They may believe

that not all abuse is equal and does deserve equal punishment. With that being said they may

argue that abusers are taken too lightly with punishment, and more consequences should be

added. Consequences like getting more time on their sentences because most of the time they

receive barley any time at all. They did do a terrible thing to a child and that child might not be

strong enough to fight back or stand up for themselves and now that child is probably
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traumatized and haunted with memories of the things the abuser put them through. Many people

may agree that the current system isn't fast enough but doesn’t want to spend more money

getting the system fixed. Child abuse happens all over the world and is a big issue. People

could also argue with their belief that the current system of reporting is good enough. People

who believe this should look more into cases of children that have been reported of being abused

and take a step back and realize that most of the children in these cases are already dead because

the abuse wasn’t reported quick enough.

Child Abuse is causing intentional harm to children under the age of eighteen. Child

abuse isn’t just physical abuse, but also verbal abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and

neglect. In Tish Davidsons article “Child Abuse,” she explains each type of child abuse in depth.

Davidson starts off with physical abuse; this type of abuse includes bruises, punching, broken

bones, minor or major cuts. She exaggerates how serious this type of abuse can get and explains

that a physical abuser is more likely to be a family member, and possibly a male. The second

type of abuse is sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is forcing someone to be involved in sexual

behaviors and/or touching a child in an inappropriate way. There are many levels of sexual

abuse, but the most suffering one is rape. Rape is when someone has intercourse with a child

under the consent age, this is very major and occurs often around the world. When rape occurs, it

must be reported but, in most cases, it isn’t reported until weeks or even months later because the

victim is afraid to speak up about what happened. A type of abuse that Davidson defines as “an

abuse that is very hard to prove” is psychological abuse. Psychological abuse is rejecting,

threatening, or humiliating a child, in the end this makes the abuser feel like they have more

power since the victim’s self-esteem is now low. The last type of abuse that is discussed by

Davidson is neglect, and it occurs more often than most think. Neglect is when an abuser doesn’t
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give a child its’ basic needs such as; food, water, education, restroom, lack of medical care, and

not allowing them to maintain a good hygiene. If one is going through or knows someone that is

going through any of the abuses that Davidson discusses in her article, needs to get

help immediately. Putting off getting help will make the abuser feel that the child is too afraid

stand up for themselves, so the abuse will gradually get worse over time.

When trying to detect what type of abuse that a child may be facing, keep in mind that a

child can fall under multiple categories. David or "Dave" Pelzer author of "A Child Called It" a

best seller, shares his stories about his experience with child abuse. In 1973 Pelzer was four years

old and was abused up until he was twelve, he was the only child abused in his family. Both his

brother and his dad knew about him being abused and didn’t say anything, because they were

afraid to speak up. Another incident was with the school; they saw the bruises and cuts on his

body and knew he was lying about where he got them from, but still took no action until it got

extremely bad. It has shown that people are too scared or worried about conflict to speak up and

possibly save a child's life. Pelzer has had many incidents involving different types of child

abuse, for example he has experiences neglect, physical, and emotional abuse all at the same

time. He has been starved, not allowed to talk to anyone, and beaten. It took many years for

someone to step up and put a stop to his abuse. Not acknowledging when a child is experiencing

child abuse can lead to death. Pelzer is very lucky for being alive and well. In another case that

was blasted all over the news on March 15, 2018 was about a little girl named Aniya Day who

was killed by her mother and her mother's boyfriend reported by Kara Sutyak, and

Jack Shea from Fox 8 News. Aniya's father was devastated, before she was beat to death he

reported the abuse repeatedly and even did an emergency custody, but it wasn’t processed fast

enough. Aniya Day also attended a daycare and they saw the bruises and black eyes that she
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would come to daycare with. When asked she would respond with "Mommy hit me, but mommy

said that I fell." The Daycare reported the abuse four different times throughout her time at the

day care. The day that she died, her mother called 9-1-1 and was very calm about the whole

situation and said that Aniya Day was acting very weird and had flu-like symptoms but wasn’t

taken to the hospital, right after that she said that Aniya Day wasn’t breathing. She was rushed to

the hospital and was pronounced dead. It was revealed by a medical examiner that Aniya Day

had been abused and neglected, her case is considered a homicide. Even though the abused was

reported several times and all the correct people were contacted, it was still too slow. Family

services failed to act quick, and it caused a four-year-old girl to die.

After explaining the previous points regarding child abuse and acting quicker, my

statement should be clear. After taking into consideration the previous points that the current

system is not working. There are still children dying each day from child abuse. New systems

should resolve the slowness of the process, it’s their job is to keep the children safe. People need

to know that child abuse is a problem and must be fixed, we could save millions of lives with one

fix.

Child abuse is a very serious topic but doesn’t take actions fast when is reported.

Children all over the world deal with being abuse, we should be able to speak up for a child

when facing any type of abuse. The different types of child abuse, physical, emotional, neglect,

and sexual, all take place throughout the world. Action is a big step to changing what society

views as child abuse and how to act when coming in contact with someone who is being abused.

Knowing the signs and paying attention to little detail about the child could save a life.
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Work Cited

“Child Abuse.” Opposing viewpoints online collection, Gale,2017. Opposing viewpoints in

http://go.galegroup.com.libdb.ojc.edu/ps/retrieve.do?resultListType=RELATED_DOCU

MENT&searchType=ts&userGroupName=wheeler_lib&inPS=true&contentSegment=&p

rodId=OVIC&docId=GALE|PC3010999343&it=r. Access 17 March 2018.

Davidson, Tish. “Child abuse.” The gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, edited by Jacqueline

L. Longe 5th ed., Gale, 2015. Science In Context,

http://Link.galegroup.com.libdb.ojc.edu/app/doc/IXAQHD732031772/SCIC?u=wheeler_

lib&sid=SCIC&xid=00416d03. Accessed 3 Apr. 2018.

“National Statistics on Child Abuse.” National Statistics on Child Abuse | National Children's

Alliance, 2014, www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/media-room/media-kit/national-

statistics-child-abuse.

Pelzer, David. A Child Called "It”. ser. 1, 1955.

Sutyak, Kara, and Jack Shea. “Mom, Boyfriend Charged with Aggravated Murder in Death of 4-

Year-Old Euclid Girl.” fox8.Com, Fox 8 Cleveland, 13 Mar. 2018,

fox8.com/2018/03/13/mom-boyfriend-charged-with-aggravated-murder-in-death-of-4-

year-old-euclid-girl/.