Child abuse: Documenting Australia's shame, The Impact of Child Abuse Can Last a Lifetime

Child abuse: Documenting Australia's shame
By Phil Mercer BBC News, Sydney  December 19, 2016

In Australia, a boy of 10 is raped by an Anglican clergyman, who cuts his victim with a small knife and smears blood over his back in a twisted ritual to symbolise the suffering of Christ.

This happened in the 1960s in Cessnock, a former mining town in the New South Wales Hunter Valley, but only now has this and other decades-old stories of sexual violence and degradation been heard, catalogued and, crucially for many victims, believed.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is an unprecedented investigation into an epidemic of depravity across Australia.

The far-reaching inquiry began in 2013 and has heard from thousands of survivors of paedophiles who worked, or volunteered, in sporting clubs, schools, churches, charities, childcare centres and the military....

For four days earlier this year, the senior Vatican official was quizzed, denying any personal wrongdoing but conceding the organisation had made grave errors.

"I am not here to defend the indefensible," said Cardinal Pell. "The Church has made enormous mistakes, is working to remedy those, but the Church has in many places - certainly in Australia - mucked things up."

When he was 13, John Ellis, a former altar boy, was molested by an Australian monk who was also implicated in a suspected paedophile ring at a former Catholic boarding school in the Scottish Highlands....

"The most important thing for people in being invited to give their own stories and having their stories valued is that somebody cares," Mr Ellis told the BBC news website.

"For many, many years people have been silenced, people have been fearful of what reaction they will get if they were to tell their truth. The overwhelming emotion people have when they have had that opportunity is empowerment."

When it hands down its final report at the end of 2017, this painstaking inquiry will have lasted for almost five years. Already, more than 1,700 cases have been referred to the authorities, including the police....
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-38301488


The Impact of Child Abuse Can Last a Lifetime
Dec. 19, 2016 By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Dec. 19, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- The traumatic effects of child abuse and neglect can persist for decades, often with substantial economic consequences, researchers report.

"We found associations of child neglect and abuse with adult socioeconomic circumstances at age 50," said lead author Snehal Pinto Pereira.

Physical, social or emotional abuse in childhood was linked at midlife to a greater risk of time off from work due to long-term sickness, said Pereira, a research associate at University College London's Institute of Child Health.

Mistreatment in childhood also lowered the odds of owning a home, she said.

"The associations for child neglect were linked to their poor reading and mathematics skills in adolescence, which in turn could hamper their ability to find work and progress in the job market," she explained.

The research is only observational and doesn't establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Still, it appears that children who suffered more than one type of abuse were most likely to be thwarted economically....

The study was published online Dec. 19 in the journal Pediatrics.

Child abuse and neglect are major public health problems in the United States, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2014, around 700,000 American kids suffered from abuse or neglect. More than 1,500 died from it, the CDC said.

Toddlers younger than 3 account for more than one-quarter of victims, the agency said.

One study estimated that 1 in 4 children experiences some form of child abuse or neglect in their lifetime, according to the CDC....
http://health.usnews.com/health-care/articles/2016-12-19/the-impact-of-child-abuse-can-last-a-lifetime



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