child abuse Essay

Child Abuse: Effects, Signs and Ways to Help

Child abuse is a common problem in the United States of America in 2008. Many people don’t understand that child abuse hasn’t been a real controversy until recent years. We often associate child abuse with many people’s suffering and problems on all levels such as physical, mental and emotional problems. There are effects on the child can be on all levels but the child does not seek help because they are scared of getting hurt more if the abuser is confronted.   One major problem is abuse cases don’t get recognized by the government because the families don’t seek help or abuse is not noticeable enough for someone else to seek help.
Many people in the US are abused and don’t tell anyone because they live in fear of seeking help.   Statistics show that all types of children are abused. Children ages one to three showed the most abuse cases in 2007 at sixteen and a half percent out of every thousand children. Fifty-four and a half percent of abused children were ages seven and older. More than half of abuse cases were girls which came in at fifty point seven percent and boys came in at forty-seven point three percent.   Forty nine point seven percent were white children. Twenty three percent were black and the remaining was Hispanic. (Hopper 2007) There are also different forms of child abuse. In 2007 sixty percent of abuse victims are neglected, fifteen percent suffered physical abuses and ten percent suffered sexual abuse and ten percent also suffered emotional maltreatment. Child abuse causes death as well. In 2007 1460 children dies because of abuse or neglect. (Hopper 2007)
Child abuse can have many effects on the child. These effects depend on the type of abuse the child suffers, the severity of the abuse, the relationship to the abuser and the child’s ability to cope and also the child’s age when the abuse starts. (Barriere 2005) The severity of the abuse doesn’t just mean how hard the child is hit but how much...