Forms of Child Abuse Prevalent in Your Locality|| By @Oasiskp || 20% to @steem

in hive-139765 •  3 years ago  (edited)

Forms of Child Abuse Prevalent in Your Locality|| By @Oasiskp || 20% to @steemkidss

Preambles

Round the globe, the fundamental issue of child abuse as always been delibrated on. The forms of child abuse may differ in countries or locality. But, we cannot address the issue without knowing the problem. Hence, what is child abuse?

Definition of Child Abuse

The English mobile dictionary defined child abuse as:

"The physical, sexual or emotional mistreatment of a child."

In other word the Wikipedia online dictionary defines it as:

"Child abuse or child maltreatment is physical, sexual, and/or psychological maltreatment or neglect of a child or children, especially by a parent or a caregiver."

From the two considered definitions above, we can deduce that child abuse deals with the cruel treatment of a child both physical, sexually, emotionally and otherwise either by parents or caregivers. The prevalent forms of it differs from locality to locality. In general child abuse are broken down in the following categories such as:
Physical abuse
Sexual abuse
Emotional abuse / Psychological abuse
Neglect

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The Form of Child Abuse Prevalent in My Locality

The following types of child abuse is prevalent in my locality:
. Sexual abuse
. Street Hawking
. Firewood Fetching
. Physical abuse
. Neglect
. Emotional abuse

Sexual Abuse

This is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent abuses a child for sexual stimulation. Such act includes penetration, intercourse, incest, rape, and oral sex. Sometimes this act may be in form of fondling - that is, touching or kissing a child's genitals, making a child fondle with the adult's genitals.

In my locality here this practice have becomes rampant to the point that parents even sexually abuse their minors. Apart from parents, older siblings or other relatives, clergy, teachers, or athletic coaches, neighbors and even foster parents not to mention strangers took part in this practice.

Some single parents do expose their children to adult sexuality, that is performing sexual acts in front of a child, exposing their genitals, and also show pornography to the children. This act affect the children a lot. We hare witnessed situations were fathers sexually abuse their own female child, and even warn the child not to tell anyone about it.

In fact the prevalent of this act move the wife of the state governor (Mrs Martha Udom) to set up an NGO name 'Family Empowerment and Youth Re-orientation Programme (FEYReP)' with the mandate to provide 'advocacy for the prevention of teenage pregnancies, education for the girl-child, promotion of moral values and economic excellence,' among others. Under this organization, sensitisation and advocacy on how to check issue of child sexual abuse as well as bringing the perpetrators of this act to book. With the success record within the period, I must say, issues of child sexual abuse is on the decline.

Street hawking

This is a common sight in our major streets, plazas and motor parks were underage children are seen hawking pure water, banana, oranges, groundnuts and other items too numerous to mention. It is often said that children from poor home need to contribute their part toward the family upkeep. Infact, some children have to hawk in the morning before going to school. After school hours, they need to come back home on time so as to resume their selling. The disturbing part is that, some of these children ends up enjoying spending their time while hawking in the company of their friends, at the end, loss interest in education. Besides,this practise expose the child to other forms of abuse, often time, sexual abuse and even kidnapping for ritual purposes.

Firewood Fetching

I equally experience this form of child abuse in my locality since my house is located quite outskirt of the city. Some parents in the locality are fond of sending their children to the farm to fetch firewood for the families cooking. Sometimes not for family use only but for commercial purpose. It is somehow disturbing to me see this children with heavy loads of firewood on their head struggling to convey it home. The painful part of this is that the child/children will be left without adult direction and protection in the farm/forest.

Physical Abuse

As the name implies, physical abuse is a form or type of child abuse that leaves physical damage on the child arising from physical aggression. Though sometimes the injury may not be intended on the part of the abuser, but the act is considered child physical abuse. The injury may be cause by way of hitting with fists, stick or other object; slapping, beating, kicking, pushing, choking, burning with hot object like iron, cigarette, and most times pouring of hot water on the child thereby leaving permanent scars on the child.

In my locality this form of child abuse is so prevalent and its often comes from those who are not the biological parents to the child. Because of economic impact on low income families, parents do sent or allow their children to serve as domestic servants (house girl/boy) with the belief that the child will be sent to school and as well being paid monthly thereby assisting the parents. Unfortunately these children are often subjected to harsh conditions and physically abuse by the same people who were suppose to protect them.

Neglect

Neglect is another form of child abuse prevalent in my community, it is a type of child abuse that is seen as an act of omission or of not doing something simply because victims are not often identified, hence, it is a pattern of failing to provide for a child's basic need over a period of time. This do exposed the victims to become vulnerable and make them easy prey to child abuser in other forms.
Types of neglect includes; physical neglect, educational neglect, and emotional neglect.

Physical Neglect: This is the failure of parents and care givers to provide food, clothing, supervision, a safe home, and medical care, as the need arises.

Educational Neglect: This is a type of neglect whereby patents and caregivers fail to enroll a school-age child in school or to provide necessary special education, or additional resources to actively participate in the school activities. This may lead to excessive absences from school.

Emotional Neglect: This has to do with failure to provide emotional support, love, and affection. It also includes the neglect of the emotional needs of the child as well as the failing to provide psychological care that the child needs. This neglect brought about extreme hunger on the child, lack of proper clothing that is suited for the weather and sometimes appearing dirty, unkept or unbathed.

Emotional Abuse

As the name implies, emotional abuse tends to hammer on the emotions of the child. It is any attitude, behavior, or act that interferes with a child's mental health or social development. It ranges from a simple verbal insult to an extreme form of punishment. As a matter of fact emotional abuse is always present when another form of abuse is found, and it do have more long-lasting negative psychiatric effects than either physical abuse or sexual abuse. This form is also prevalent in my locality. It is surprising that parents and caregivers alongside older siblings engaged in this inhuman treatment.

Emotional abuse do includes: name-calling, bully, ridicule, degradation, destruction of personal belongings, torture or killing of a pet, inappropriate demands, withholding communication, among others. Most often than not, the abuse child may react by distancing him/her self from the abuser, internalizing the abusive words, or fighting back by insulting the abuser.

Others

Apart from the four main forms of child abuse mentioned above that is prevalent in my locality, there are other uncategorise once which also are most common such as:

  • Denying of meal: This is another disturbing form of child abuse prevalent in my locality. This occur when the child misbehave or fails to act on the instruction given. The punishment attach to that is to deny the child meal, mostly dinner.
  • Child Sex worker: This do come from single mother's who themselves are promiscuous. They allow their adult male sex partners to have canal knowledge of the female child and in turn the so-called mother or caregiver gets the money.

The effects they can have on the kids and how kids can avoid them

It is pertinent to note that some of this abuse children don't know that they are being abuse. But in subsequent years they begin to feel the impact of the abuse. The effect includes; physical and mental difficulties in the future, eating disorders, increased risk of sexually transmitted infections due to their immature immune systems, sexual dysfunction, tendency for victims to blame themselves for the abuse, difficulty in maintaining relationships such as romantic or friendship later in life due to the lack of attachment they had in their earlier stages of development as a result of neglect, fear of a particular person or family member who may have abuse the child, amongst others.

To a large extent, the abuse child cannot totally avoid their abuser because of some underlying factors such as; ignorance of how to expose the abuser, fear of being sent out of the house, lack of trust on others as well as fear of being ridicule. To those who speak up, they have been rescued from their abuser. So the right thing to do is to speak up or raise alarm. They also need to avoid going to places were the abuser may be seen.

Conclusion

On the whole, forms of child abuse prevalent in my locality as I have mentione and discuss are inexhaustible owing to the fact that some are similar and others are not easily identified due to the clever manner it is carried out.

I am inviting @umoh88, @inwangjnr26, @udyevans to join the contest.

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Wow! This is well detailed, thanks for sharing your thoughts and views on this serious topic ravaging the world today.

Appreciated, thanks for reading through.

Great post
It's sad your post contains plagiarism,but great job thu, you really made your point