Essay Sample on Sexual and Physical Abuse

Introduction

Cellini (2004) says that when a child is victimized through sexual, physical and emotional abuse, they are traumatised. This trauma then manifests itself in children engaging in anti-social behaviour and criminal conduct. This is because their neurological development is stunted by the abuse. This poor neurological development translates into them lacking the intellectual and emotional maturity to distinguish right from wrong. The author concludes that to reduce the chances of a victim of abuse later engaging in anti-social or criminal behaviour, the government needs to set up programs for juvenile offenders or minors who engage in anti-social behaviours so as to help these children to get back on the track to full neurological development. According to the author, this necessarily means that the juvenile justice system must set up working relationships with schools and families. The high rates of child delinquency in America remains an unresolved issue. The traditional approach of using the certainty of punishment as a form of deterrence was abandoned and the focus shifted to addressing the underlying causes of child delinquency to reduce the high rates of children in conflict with the law

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Jung et al (2017) begin from the basic assumption that children react differently in stressful circumstances according to their gender. While girls are adept at processing trauma inwardly, boys tend to manifest their trauma by acting out. The authors conclude that the general rule is that abused girls will engage in self-destructive behaviours, unlike boys who will do things that harm other people as a result of being victimized. The exception to this general rule are instances where the nature of the abuse is so traumatic that girls also manifest their trauma outwardly. The data analyzed by Jung et al (2017) was secondary and drawn from the Lehigh Longitudinal Study (1973-2010) in eastern Pennsylvania. The first wave of the study (1976-1977) had children participants who were below 6 years of age in the pre-school stage. The second wave of the study (1980-1982) happened when the same children were of school-going age. An adolescent assessment (1990-1992) was when they were 14 to 22 years old. The final stage of adult assessment happened in 2010, on the approximately 80% of the original participants who were still alive aged between 31 to 41 years. The findings of the research were that abuse during preschool stage causes trauma that manifests itself in problematic behaviors shown during the second wave of the study by both genders, however, at the adolescent stage girls will internalize their trauma. Thus it is more likely that an adolescent girl who is a victim of abuse will engage in behavior that doesn't harm other people. The exception to this general rule are instances where the nature of the abuse is so traumatic that an adolescent girl acts out just like an adolescent male.

Lansford et al (2007) advance the idea that there are links between child victimization and a failure to transition into well-rounded individuals. They say their research reveals that a child's race and gender are a factor in predicting the likelihood of them being victimized at an early age. To the authors, the bad outcomes for society are that victims of abuse may become: career criminals; school dropouts; teen moms; and unable to get or keep a job. The authors observe that these effects were most pronounced for the black community at the time they did the study.

Gold et al (2011) say child abuse trauma often manifests itself as violent juvenile criminal behavior. The writers explain that child abuse creates violent juvenile offenders by instilling victims with a sense of shame. These victims then covert this shame into anger directed towards the rest of the world manifested as acts of criminal violence. Gold et al (2011) justify investigating how victims of child abuse become violent juvenile offenders since violent delinquency in the US has a devastating effect on peaceful law abiding citizens. They observe that sexual abuse is the biggest reason why victims become violent offenders because it causes to be symptomatic of depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The authors, however, warn that violent delinquency is not always a by-product of child abuse because a victim may not convert their shame into anger directed at the rest of the world. Gold et al (2011), defines "shame" as a painful feeling to withdraw from society because of perceived failures. When a victim of child abuse feels that they contributed to their own victimization, they will harbor intensely negative feelings that may manifest themselves as acts of violence.

Gold et al (2011) arrived at their conclusions from examining 112 adolescents among who 90 were male and 22 were female between ages 12 to 19 years that had been being held for court-ordered psychological evaluations for various reasons including, visible signs of mental illness. The results of their study indicated that abusive parenting instils shame in children which may turn them into violent offenders. The work of Gold et al (2011) suggests that violent juvenile delinquency is a pathological response to trauma.

Gold, J., Sullivan, & Lewis (2011) had the hypothesis of their study was that parental abuse causes shame in children which may then be converted into anger that fuels violent children delinquency. They conduct their research on 112 adolescents age between 12 and 19 years old. 90 of the participants were male while 22 were female. The results of their findings are that child abuse by parents is one of the biggest reason why children become violent offenders. Gold et al (2011), defines "shame" as a painful feeling to withdraw from society because of perceived failures. When a victim of child abuse feel that they contributed to their own victimization, they harbor a lot of anger towards the world which may manifest themselves as acts of violence. The authors, however, warn that violent delinquency is not always a by-product of sexual abuse because a victim may not convert their shame into anger.

Chauhan et al (2017) report that a culture of child abuse may impact the quality of life in a community. The authors use this as the justification for choosing an inner-city black community as the research area where there is a culture of criminal behavior predominately engaged in by black men which negatively affects everyone else's quality of life. Consequently, Chauhan et al (2017) have their study underpinned by three main hypotheses namely: (1) a community with a culture of child abuse has a crime problem when children become young adults ;(2) this is because engaging in criminal behaviour is used by survivors as a coping mechanism; and (3) the high crime rates involving black inner-city men is a by-product of child abuse.

Chauhan et al (2017) are the first group of researchers to propose that there are links between high crime rates in a given neighbourhood with child abuse. Despite the sound nature of their study, there are weaknesses the authors willingly accept (Chauhan et al: 2017:P.564). They relied on juvenile court records so, the study excluded other forms of problematic behaviour in adults that can be traced back to child abuse. The other limitation could be that the study was limited to an inner-city black community, therefore, there are no guaranteed that the same conclusions will be arrived at when the location was chosen is in another part of the nation and the subjects are not black.

Nonetheless, the results of the study done by Chauhan et al (2017) suggest that putting in place intervention programs aimed addressing child abuse and neglect when they exhibit problematic behaviours may be an effective long-term solution to reducing crime rates in inner-city black communities.

Shin et al (2017: pp 6-8) see crime as a public health and safety issue in urban black neighbourhoods. Epidemiology in the field of public health is a scientific method of using primary data to study estimate what causes diseases in human populations and how they may be prevented.

Their findings are that abuse and neglect causes trauma in victims mental processes that make them have poor impulse control important to making moral decisions about right and wrong (pp 6-8) without this impulse control, victims of child abuse are emotionally immature and may resort to risk-taking or engaging in criminal behavior as the means of coping with their trauma. These conclusions echo similar findings by Cellini (2004) which showed that a child's hippocampus is very vulnerable to traumatic stress caused by child abuse. This traumatic stress, in turn, impairs their ability to modulate their emotions increasing the likelihood of them being delinquent.

This trauma then manifests itself in children engaging in anti-social behavior and criminal conduct. This is because their neurological development is stunted by the abuse. This poor neurological development translates into them lacking the intellectual and emotional maturity to distinguish right from wrong. For example, Shin et al (2017) propose that the property crime of vandalism committed by juveniles can be traced back to emotional abuse which makes the child victim harbor uncontrollable anger towards the world expressed as a desire to destroy property.

Shin et al (2017) seem to have taken the position that crime in urban black communities is similar to a disease epidemic that needs to be examined in an epidemiological way. Shin et al (2017) did so to establish the childhood causes for people later in life engaging in criminal behaviour. The participants were young adults aged 18 to 25 recruited from a North Eastern metropolitan area. Among their findings was that emotional abuse of children means victims have poor impulse control important to making moral decisions about right and wrong (Shin et al 2017: pp 6-8) Without this impulse control, victims of child abuse are emotionally immature and may resort to risk-taking or engaging in criminal behaviour as the means of coping with their trauma. For example, Shin et al (2017) propose that the property crime of vandalism committed by juveniles can be traced back to emotional abuse which makes the child victim harbour uncontrollable anger towards the world expressed as a desire to destroy property.

Lahlah et al (2013) question the validity of several previous studies that show boys from the African American community and other ethnic minorities commit more violent crimes compared to their white peers in Europe or USA because they lack fathers in the home. They concede that official crime statistics in America, as well and many surveys violent crimes by minors show that black kids are most culpable for them. The authors, however, say there is a lack of clarity on why this is the way things are.

The sociological explanation for this trend is deprivation which leads to violent behaviour among some adolescents. This is because structural approaches in sociological studies see links between the nature of a given society and the levels of crime in a given area. Cultural explanations for this trend assert that juveniles from ethnic minorities, such as the African American community, tend to commit violent crimes because their value systems are different from those of the majority ethnic group in a nation that makes all the laws. This clash of cultural values may create the problem of an ethnic minority youth not knowing the proper conduct in a particular situation which leads them to break the law.

Lahlah et al (2013) concede that even if it is a statistical fact of that youth from ethnic minorities commit more violent crimes, researchers have not settled on which of the three explanations on this trend is accurate. Their solution is to use the in...