1/30/2009

Increasing child abuse...

Göran Harnesk.

[Addition January 31, see the end of this posting]. A Swedish blogger Jenny Westerstrand, PhD in law, wrote an angry blogposting triggered by an article in one of the biggest newspapers in Sweden that the abuse of children is increasing in Sweden. Despite our ban on corporal punishment children are beaten! And this is horrible, and in fact crime! Not only a moral crime. And it causes damage, real physical (neurological) damage. Also see the ACE-study's findings (see link in the labels in the end of this posting!).

”Help, do something!”

she writes (see earlier blogpostings about her writings here). And wishes that any of our most courageous journalists, with sense for justice (and with a hidden camera), would make TV-programs about this.

“It’s so shocking so one want to cry.


Child abuse is increasing and many children are exposed to awful actions [and conditions] by their parents, almost always it’s the father that is the abuser Children’s Right in Society (in Sweden) says.


What are the Swedish men, young as old, doing? Because young women are calling Bris [Children’s Right in Society] and telling that they are abused by their boyfriends too. Why can’t we get any journalism not only telling us about innocent men for a while, but a journalism that sees it from the children’s perspective and dig into the world where violence is an everyday life context for small human beings who are totally defenseless in their own homes, with their own swine skunks to – mostly – fathers.”

Each tenth child is beaten the article says.


The number of children calling Children’s Right in Society to tell about abuse further increased during 2008 (see this report in English). And who are calling? Not the youngest. What are they exposed to?


During the last five years the number has increased with 20 percent.


The Convention of the Rights of the Child says that children has right to become protected from physical and psychological violence (Article19, see here for all the articles).


Last year Children’s Right in Society got almost 22,000 contacts from children and adolescents around Sweden, 30 years after we got the ban on corporal punishment and 20 years after the United Nations Convention of the Right of the Child.


The report from Children’s Right is gloomy reading.


In almost each tenth contact children were telling about physical and psychological abuse. The report is terrifying reading.


Children have told about routine-like violence, where they have become beaten and sometimes even been beaten with weapons like belt and sticks daily, but some have also told about more torture like violence. And some children have also told about how they have become shaken and beaten till they lost the consciousness.


When children are exposed to violence the perpetrator is often a parent, almost always the dad. My addition: but I know of cases where the mother was the main abuser.


According to the report the violence is combined with psychological violence where the children are told that they aren’t loved and worthless and that that’s the reason why they are beaten.


How horrible, and not true! Nobody “deserves” being abused how “worthless” they even are!


Many calls come from young women telling that they have become beaten by their boyfriends. The girl has often moved from home to an older boyfriend (and why is that?) and is exposed to both physical and psychological abuse.


They realize that they maybe are badly treated, but they don’t dare to tell anybody, because they think they have to blame themselves because they have chosen this relation themselves.


One of five children expresses some kind of anxiety. It can be anxiety and agony in children living with violent and abusing parents, worry for friends or anxiety as an expression for psychological ill-health (no wonder the ill-health!).


Some children experience that they are let down by the society. When they have told other adults, as teachers and personnel in social services about the abuse they haven’t gotten any reaction.

“It’s frightening realizing that the children have told something [and somebody] but nothing happens. They are not taken seriously, “

the director-.general for Children’s Rights in Society Göran Harnesk says.


Many children express a fear for the duty to report, a duty which means that all working with children has a duty or obligation to report social evils (bad conditions), because the contact with the parents then is at risk of getting worse.


I would also want to write about an article in Norwegian about “Psychologists are lacking self-knowledge (self-understanding). The psychology profession is lacking capacity to see its own political impact and has overseen the growth of the therapeutically culture.” Addition February 1: see here.


I think they (psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists etc.) too often run the errands of the power! Trying to adapt people to the “culture” in the society and at workplaces (as schools are for children and young people) where they live and work, instead of really questioning it… Are they adapting people to a sick culture that should become changed rather?


Addition January 31: also see this blogposting, about "Normalisation of abuse." I want to write about this posting later too.

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