Focus in alleged satanic rape case, Measuring child abuse's legacy, Sexual abuse and neglect may be passed down

"the first large, longitudinal study to track how victims of child abuse treat their own children has found little evidence of a cycle of violence, but suggests that sexual abuse and neglect may indeed be passed down the generations."

Porn focus in alleged satanic rape case
March 26 2015 By Shain Germaner

Johannesburg - Police are scanning the electronic devices belonging to four people, including a church pastor, accused of raping a 9-year-old boy in an alleged satanic ritual.

This is to determine if they contain any illegal pornography.

This emerged in the Germiston Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday, when the 9-year-old’s grandparents, uncle and pastor appeared on charges of the alleged rape.

While a trial date was expected to be set, the court heard that the police needed time to download the data of all four accused’s cellphones and laptops to search for child porn and other evidence.

The group were arrested last month. Police suspect they brought the then 7-year-old to the Full Gospel Church of God in Witfield, Boksburg, in 2013.

At the venue, the four, clad in red robes and chanting, allegedly forced the boy to fondle their genitals before the uncle is said to have raped the boy....
http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/porn-focus-in-alleged-satanic-rape-case-1.1837340#.VRTHr5M0OMI 

Measuring child abuse's legacy
Emily Underwood

Science 27 March 2015:
Vol. 347 no. 6229 p. 1408
DOI: 10.1126/science.347.6229.1408

The notion that victims of physical abuse as kids are more likely to abuse their own children, often described as the "cycle of violence," is widely held but sparsely documented. Now, the first large, longitudinal study to track how victims of child abuse treat their own children has found little evidence of a cycle of violence, but suggests that sexual abuse and neglect may indeed be passed down the generations. The study, published this week in Science, also makes a controversial claim: that heightened surveillance of families with a history of abuse may have biased some studies taken as evidence for the cycle of violence.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6229/1408.summary

Abused Kids Not Destined to Be Abusive Parents, Study Finds
By Amy Norton  HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, March 26, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Conventional wisdom says that abused children often grow up to be abusive parents, but a 30-year study of American families suggests it's more complicated than that.

In one striking finding, researchers uncovered little evidence that physical abuse is passed from one generation to the next.

"That was extremely surprising," said lead researcher Cathy Spatz Widom, a professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in New York City. "The theory has been that children of parents who were abused are at increased risk of physical abuse."

That theory has been supported by past research. But, Widom explained, those studies have been hampered by limitations, such as working "backward" -- starting with parents accused of abuse, and asking them if they'd been mistreated as kids.

"The problem there is, you miss the parents who were abused but did not go on to have these issues," Widom explained.

Her study, published in the March 27 issue of Science, followed two generations of families, including over 1,100 parents and their kids. More than half of the parents had been abused or neglected as children, back in the 1960s and 1970s; the rest had no history of abuse, but were from similar backgrounds.

To see whether the children of abused parents were at risk, Widom's team used three sources: Records from child protective services (CPS); interviews with parents; and interviews with their children once they were young adults.

Overall, the researchers found, children of abused parents were at no greater risk of physical abuse. And that was true whether the information came from parents' or children's reports, or CPS records.

Based on CPS reports, for example, almost 7 percent of kids born to abused parents suffered physical abuse, versus just over 5 percent of the comparison group -- a difference that was not statistically significant.

In contrast, children of abused parents were at higher risk of sexual abuse or neglect, the finding showed.
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2015/03/26/abused-kids-not-destined-to-be-abusive-parents-study-finds