Explore current social developments, issues, and controversies concerning young victims! The Victimization of Children: Emerging Issues keeps students and practitioners working with young victims on the cutting edge of the latest research developments regarding crimes against children. Leading experts from the legal, medical, and sociological communities explore some of the most urgent issues involving child victims. Researchers and practitioners in victim services, social work, mental health, public health, and criminal justice will all benefit from this useful resource. While numerous books have been written on the topic of child abuse and neglect, few delve into the more contemporary issues and problems. The Victimization of Children fills a large void in the literature by offering advanced discussions of today's most relevant topics, making this book an in-depth supplement to generic textbooks. Forward-thinking and thought-provoking, this timely resource provides sound research to expand your knowledge base. This book provides insights into such contemporary issues as: the victimization of youths on the Internet children as victims of war and terrorism spatial patterns of child maltreatmentthe concentration of child maltreatment within certain geographical areas religion-related child abuse the role of health care professionals in response to child victimization children with disabilitiesabuse, neglect, and the child welfare system fetal homicideemerging statutory and judicial regulation of third-party assaults legal and social issues surrounding closed-circuit television testimony of child victims and witnesses juvenile courts and their role in addressing family violence The Victimization of Children provides tables, figures, and the latest statistics of various aspects of child victimization to complement the experts' contributions. This book offers new and different responses and interventions to meet the increasingly diverse contexts and situations within which child maltreatment occurs. Emerging trends are explored within this book from a cross-section of disciplines, including law, sociology, criminal justice, psychology, and health services.

The international feminist contributors to this book look through the lens of poststructuralism at how child sexual abuse is differently represented and understood in the populist, academic, clinical, media and legal contexts. Reworking earlier feminist analyses, they show how child sexual abuse is not just about gender and power but also about class, race and sexuality. The first, theoretical section of the book critiques normative theories of the 'effects' of abuse, explores the impact and consequences of feminist interventions and critically examines the potential usefulness of a feminist post-stucturalist approach. In the second part, these understandings are applied to specific arenas of practice with the aim of providing a framework for critical intervention and alternative and better ways of working with child sexual abuse.

Given their rhetoric on safeguarding, the response of religious organisations to abuse by the clergy - sexual, physical and spiritual - has been inept, thoughtless, mean, and without any sense of urgency. Sex, Power, Control explores the underlying reasons for the mishandling of recent abuse cases. Using psychoanalytical and sociological insights, and including her own experiences as shown in the BBC documentary Exposed: The Church's Darkest Secret, Gardner asks why the Churches find themselves in such a crisis, and how issues of power and control have contributed to secrecy, deception and heartache. Drawing on survivor accounts and delving into the psychology of clergy abusers, she reveals a culture of avoidance and denial, while an examination of power dynamics highlights institutional narcissism and a hierarchical structure based on deference, with defensive assumptions linked to sex, gender and class. Sex, Power, Control is an invaluable resource for all those in the church or similar institutions, and for anyone concerned about child abuse.

'We were just sacks of flesh existing as punchbags for their rage, or toys for their entertainment' Chris Wild lost his dad aged 11, leaving him to grow up in the care system. There, he witnessed the incessant physical and sexual abuse of children, with the only escape leading to the streets. So many others like him, failed by the systems put in place to protect them, ended up with nothing but drink, drugs, prostitution and crime as their normality. Later, working in a care home himself became the only way Chris could help, but he was shocked to discover little had changed and vulnerable children were still being failed. In Damaged, he shares heartbreaking memories of the care system along with the stories of all the boys, girls, men and women he met along the way - exposing why we must take action now to protect all of Britain's forgotten children.

Diagnose and treat shaken baby syndrome with advice from experts in the field!When an angry adult shakes a baby, the child may suffer brain damage, broken ribs, deafness, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, coma, or death. Often there are personal, ethical, and legal consequences as well for everyone involved. The Shaken Baby Syndrome: A Multidisciplinary Approach is the first book to cover the full spectrum of shaken baby syndrome (SBS), from public health implications to prosecution. Because SBS causes so much damage and has so many implications, every case requires the cooperation of a team of professionals ranging from ophthalmologists to attorneys. The Shaken Baby Syndrome: A Multidisciplinary Approach will help you understand what responsibilities each member of the SBS team has, thus enabling you to work together more productively. The more smoothly the team works, the better the results for the child are likely to be.The Shaken Baby Syndrome: A Multidisciplinary Approach offers expert information and advice on every aspect of prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up, including: who shakes babies and why they do it what biomechanical effects occur when a child is shaken what symptoms and signs various medical specialists--radiographers, ophthalmologists, neurologists, pathologists--should look for in potential cases of SBS how medical social workers should approach cases of suspected SBS how police can most effectively investigate SBS how to prosecute SBS perpetrators how educators, public health workers, counselors, and social workers can prevent SBSThis comprehensive reference is essential for anyone who encounters SBS, including emergency room personnel, physicians, nurses, social workers, police officers, attorneys, and child care workers. Every year thousands of babies are shaken badly enough to cause damage. The Shaken Baby Syndrome: A Multidisciplinary Approach offers the information you need to help those children.

Psychosis and the Traumatised Self explores what it is like to experience psychosis for individuals with histories of childhood physical and sexual abuse. The book additionally explores how meaning expressed in psychosis might originate from the effects of abuse, but also long-term life difficulties, motivations, memories, social history, and struggles to narrate and understand. One chapter focuses on refugees who suffered trauma as adults and later became psychotic. Another chapter examines how trauma leads to the destruction of certainty and trust, thereby opening a pathway to persecutory ideas. Drawing on a developmental model of trauma, it is proposed that dissociated parts of the self that developed during childhood contribute to psychosis in adults when undergoing difficulties and stress. Presented with case illustrations, the book will be useful for those who work in the area of psychosis and abuse to understand the experiences of individuals, and how we might develop appropriate therapy and care.

The true story of 2 year-old Anna, abandoned by her natural parents, left alone in a neglected orphanage. Elaine and Ian had travelled half way round the world to adopt little Anna. She couldn't have been more wanted, loved and cherished. So why was she now in foster care and living with me? It didn't make sense. Until I learned what had happened. ... Dressed only in nappies and ragged T-shirts the children were incarcerated in their cots. Their large eyes stared out blankly from emaciated faces. Some were obviously disabled, others not, but all were badly undernourished. Flies circled around the broken ceiling fans and buzzed against the grids covering the windows. The only toys were a few balls and a handful of building bricks, but no child played with them. The silence was deafening and unnatural. Not one of the thirty or so infants cried, let alone spoke.

In his study of children and criminality, criminologist and research analyst Ronald Flowers provides an understanding of the relationship between child victimization and juvenile delinquency as well as a comprehensive review of the literature. Assessing the effectiveness of present conceptual frameworks, modes of research, and social and legal measures, he offers recommendations for furthering professional and research efforts in the field. His analysis blends the findings of leading experts and researchers in a variety of disciplines with relevant FBI and law enforcement data. An additional feature is the "model statute" for the study, prevention, and treatment of child victimization in all of its guises.

Sexual, Physical, and Emotional Abuse in Out-of-Home Care brings into the open current or past sexually, physically, or emotionally abusive behaviors between children or between children and their caregivers in out-of-home care and helps prevent future victimization. The curriculum gives you 20 exercises that promote respectful and nurturing interactions among caregivers and children by offering healthy concepts of touching, communication, and boundaries. By implementing the concepts in this curriculum, you ll help create positive, healthy attachments for children in out-of-home care who may feel abandoned and alone. Exercises in Sexual, Physical, and Emotional Abuse in Out-of-Home Care assist children and caregivers in understanding their rights and others'rights in residential treatment centers and group or foster homes. Exercises focus on: communication on a continuum--teaches children and staff about their own communication and the communications they receive from others a touch continuum--provides an excellent vehicle for discussing the comforting and soothing touch children need and how to differentiate this from eight other types of touch differentiating sexual play from problematic sexual contact between children--helps children and staff talk about sex personal space and boundaries--discusses these as areas of major violations in children who have been abused sexual knowledge--teaches the body parts and their functions discovering what a sex offender does to trick children into situations that end up in sexual abuse--asks the children to make rules that assist other children to recognize unsafe situations, and then gives them the opportunity to create a video, pamphlet, advertisement, or commercial to tell other kids these rulesThis curriculum is unique because it can be completed through children and adults talking together. It assumes that there will be difficulties and conflicts between staff and children and among children themselves and provides a forum in which to raise and discuss these issues. You ll find the curriculum perfect for caregiver training or as exercises caregivers and children do together. You ll also find it very useful for working with children 's families either in family sessions or in multifamily groups.

Current family policy approaches emphasise the significance of paternal involvement in children's lives, yet there has been a silence on violent and abusive fathering in these discourses. This is the first UK book to specifically focus on violent fathering discussing original research in the context of domestic violence and emerging practice literature to address this problem. Violent fathering and the risks to children examines fathers' perceptions of their domestic violence and its impact on children, their relationships with children and their parenting practices. It looks at fathers' reasons for wanting contact with children post-separation, abusive parenting practices during child contact and the impacts of perpetrator programmes on the fathers' own perceptions of their abuse. It also discusses abused mothers' perceptions of their ex-partners' parenting. The author recommends ways that policy and practice can be improved in order to safeguard children in family law and child protection practice through a better understanding of the risks posed and appropriate assessment of violent fathers as parents. This book will be of interest to academics and students in family and child welfare policy, socio-legal studies, social work, criminology, gender studies and other disciplines with an interest in domestic violence and child protection. It will also be also be of considerable value to professionals working in this area.

Series Information:
The State of Welfare

This book deals with four types of abuse: neglect, emotional abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. For each type of abuse, selected works of fiction, literary, and professional perspectives are juxtaposed along with applications for utilizing the stories in a hypothetical therapy setting. In addition, reports of mental health workers, organizations, agencies, statistics, cases studies, and important research findings regarding each type of abuse are summarized. Web links are provided as well as information on finding the professional print resources cited. Suggestions for additional fiction suitable for bibliotherapy are provided. This is an invaluable resource for teachers, parents, and any adults interested in helping teens battling with the damage of abuse.

The sexual abuse of children is now seen as an enormous problem; first, because there is an increasing awareness that it is more prevalent than previously thought, and second, because it gives rise to so many complex questions. How is sexual abuse to be defined? What are the effects of abuse? How can the victim be helped? How can abuse be prevented? These two comprehensive volumes cover a wide spectrum of basic and applied issues. Expert contributors -- including physicians, attorneys, psychologists, philosophers, social workers, and engineers -- address such relevant topics as epidemiology, animal models, legal reforms, feminist scholarship, child pornography, medical assessment, and diverse models of psychotherapeutic intention.

The sexual abuse of children is now seen as an enormous problem; first, because there is an increasing awareness that it is more prevalent than previously thought, and second, because it gives rise to so many complex questions. How is sexual abuse to be defined? What are the effects of abuse? How can the victim be helped? How can abuse be prevented? These two comprehensive volumes cover a wide spectrum of basic and applied issues. Expert contributors -- including physicians, attorneys, psychologists, philosophers, social workers, and engineers -- address such relevant topics as epidemiology, animal models, legal reforms, feminist scholarship, child pornography, medical assessment, and diverse models of psychotherapeutic intention.

This seminal book in the literature of child protective services stimulates critical thinking and informed discussion for those professionals and educators concerned with the quality of children's protective services. The first book of its kind to present scholarly reports on false allegations, Assessing Child Maltreatment Reports tackles the age-old problem of deciding which reports, verbal or written, represent truth and which represent falsehood. When one deals with accusations in the area of child maltreatment, special problems are posed. This vital resource brings home the complexity and seriousness of confronting the need to separate true reports from false reports. Given the serious consequences of reports of maltreatment, determining the accuracy or inaccuracy of such reports is of major critical importance to all concerned and the parents, children, and professionals directly involved. This book deals effectively and practically with the everyday work of assessing the validity and reliability of maltreatment reports and guides professionals through rough waters of finding truth with helpful research.This courageous book provides hope for establishing a deeper understanding of the broad system of child protection and consequently, enables professionals to better handle individual crises and cases. Containing a range of chapters--authored by leading academic researchers and practitioners in child welfare services in the United States--which examine the policy and practice issues related to false allegations of child abuse and neglect, this volume provides guideposts for further research and discussion. College and university students in child welfare and related programs, human service practitioners working in child protective and welfare services, and the larger public--both parents and professionals working with children--who have an interest in this important issue, will find Assessing Child Maltreatment Reports a compassionate approach to a sensitive issue.

Never before has world-renowned psychoanalyst Alice Miller examined so persuasively the long-range consequences of childhood abuse on the body. Using the experiences of her patients along with the biographical stories of literary giants such as Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, and Marcel Proust, Miller shows how a child's humiliation, impotence, and bottled rage will manifest itself as adult illness--be it cancer, stroke, or other debilitating diseases. Never one to shy away from controversy, Miller urges society as a whole to jettison its belief in the Fourth Commandment and not to extend forgiveness to parents whose tyrannical childrearing methods have resulted in unhappy, and often ruined, adult lives. In this empowering work, writes Rutgers professor Philip Greven, "readers will learn how to confront the overt and covert traumas of their own childhoods with the enlightened guidance of Alice Miller."

How successful have recent government initiatives been in preventing child harm and family breakdown?

The NSPCC recently conducted a large-scale two-year evaluation study with families in difficulty, to explore the content and effectiveness of family support services.

Looking at the services from all stakeholder perspectives – children, parents, staff – Ruth Gardner presents the findings of the study and asks to what extent specific problems such as parental stress, vulnerability, isolation and child behaviour were resolved over six months of interventions including group work, parent training and volunteer home visiting.

Using the voices of all the stakeholders, Supporting Families reviews the national policy for family support since the inception of social services departments and, through best practice and policy recommendations, points the way forward to more inclusive provision.

Bringing together NSPCC research with key practice-based solutions, Ruth Gardner's timely study is required reading for everyone working to prevent child harm.

As recently as 1970, child sexual abuse was seen as extremely rare and usually harmless. Over thirty years later, the media regularly covers child sexual abuse cases, many survivors speak openly about their experiences, and a thriving network of public and private organizations seek to prevent child sexual abuse and remedy its effects. This is the story of these dramatic changes and the activists who helped bring them about.
The Politics of Child Sexual Abuse is the first study of activism against child sexual abuse, tracing its emergence in feminist anti-rape efforts, its development into mainstream self-help, and its entry into mass media and public policy. Nancy Whittier deftly charts the development of the movement's "therapeutic politics," demonstrating that activists viewed tactics for changing emotions and one's sense of self as necessary for widespread social change and combined them with efforts to change institutions and the state. Though activism originated with feminists, as the movement grew and spread to include the goals of non-feminist survivors, opponents, therapists, law enforcement, and elected officials, participants were pulled toward formulations of child sexual abuse as a medical or criminal problem and away from emphases on gender and power. In the process, the movement both succeeded beyond its wildest dreams and saw its agenda transformed in ways that were sometimes unrecognizable.
A lucid and moving account, The Politics of Child Sexual Abuse draws powerful lessons about the transformative potential of therapeutic politics, their connection to institutions, and the processes of incomplete social change that characterize American politics today.

A house full of whispers is a true account of my struggle through unimaginable abuse, firstly by my foster parents and in a cruel twist of fate by my biological mother. Step-daddy loved me in a special way that became a secret. Mother allowed appalling things to happen, and played torturous games with my mind. I fought hard to survive as he broke my bones but never achieved my soul. The night devil was going to punish me for daring to speak out, I knew if he held me captive again I would die from the struggle, the dark abyss I had escaped was safer than the streets I was thrown into, propelling me into despair and suicide.

The second edition of this successful handbook, edited by well-known experts in this field, includes core questions in the field of child abuse and neglect. It addresses major challenges in child maltreatment work, starting with "What is child abuse and neglect?" and then examines why maltreatment occurs and what are its consequences. The handbook also addresses prevention, intervention, investigation, treatment as well as civil and criminal legal perspectives. It comprehensively studies the issue from the perspective of a broader, international and cross-cultural human experience. Apart from a thorough revision of existing chapters, this edition includes many new chapters covering recent developments in this area and other issues not covered in the first edition. There is more focus on substance abuse, psychological abuse, and on social and community involvement and public health provisions in the prevention of child maltreatment. The handbook examines what is known now and more importantly what remains to be researched in the coming decades to help abused and neglected children, their families and their communities, thereby taking the field forward.

"The major strengths of this book are the manual format, the comprehensiveness of the text, the direct focus on medical practitioners, the diagrams, and the photo-illustrations. The sections on normal anatomy, normal sexual growth, and development are excellent as is the section on conducting the physical examination. The concise listing of treatments and drug doses for various conditions is invaluable."

This clear and compelling textbook provides a complete survey of the field of child abuse and neglect from the perspective of modern developmental attachment theory. It starts by describing the ways in which attachment difficulties manifest themselves in children's behaviour, and goes on looking at abuse, neglect, and compound cases of abuse and neglect, backing it all up with empirical research evidence and vivid case material. In its final section, it provides a comprehensive review of attachment-based interventions. Written by an extremely respected and successful author, this book, anchored in research evidence, places its emphasis on practice implementation and aims at answering all the kinds of questions practitioners and student practitioners specialising in child welfare are most likely to ask.

'Grooming' and the Sexual Abuse of Children: Institutional, Internet and Familial Dimensions critically examines the official and popular discourses on grooming, predominantly framed within the context of online sexual exploitation and abuse committed by strangers, and institutional child abuse committed by those in positions of trust. Set against the broader theoretical framework of risk, security and governance, this book argues that due to the difficulties of drawing clear boundaries between innocuous and harmful motivations towards children, pre-emptive risk-based criminal law and policy are inherently limited in preventing, targeting and criminalising 'grooming' behaviour prior to the manifestation of actual harm. Through examination of grooming against the complexities of the onset of sexual offending against children and its actual role in this process, the author broadens existing discourses by providing a fuller, more nuanced conceptualisation of grooming, including its role in intra-familial and extra-familial contexts. There is also timely discussion of new and emerging forms of grooming, such as 'street' or 'localised' grooming, as typified by recent cases in Rochdale and Oldham, and 'peer-to-peer' grooming. The first inter-disciplinary, thematic, and empirical investigation of grooming in a multi-jurisdictional context, 'Grooming' and the Sexual Abuse of Children draws on extensive empirical research in the form of over fifty interviews with professionals, working in the fields of sex offender risk assessment, management or treatment, as well as child protection or victim support in the four jurisdictions of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Impeccably presented and meticulously considered, this book will be of interest to criminologists and those working and studying in the field of policing and criminal justice studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners in the areas of child protection and sex offender management.

This book approaches as a serious and severe form of child abuse. While early research tended to portray victims as seductive provocateers, recent studies indicate that birth order, family configuration factors, personality, physical and socio-economic factors may predispose children to risk of incestuous victimization. Incest is associated with anti-social, deviant, illegal and/or self-destructive coping mechanisms in many victims. This book contains data from two sets of substantiated and investigated incest cases taken from official reports by the Department of Welfare in Mississippi and the Department of Welfare in Virginia. It compares the findings from these two data sets to further delineate risk factors and family variables found in incest families. The authors further compare the case studies with previous research findings in order to provide direction for future research, intervention and prevention.

The current system of protecting society's children from abuse is failing miserably. In this volume, scholars affiliated with universities and professional associations nationwide pinpoint a better strategy. Their research spotlights neighborhood-based child protection systems and provides a comprehensive approach for creating procedures that meaningfully address child maltreatment.

The volume discusses the challenges of moving toward such a system within the current legal, political, and cross-cultural contexts of child protection. Examples of promising applications of a community-based approach are cited. Also cited are the legal and practical structural steps to be taken in creating caring communities that effectively address child abuse and neglect.