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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 5:14 pm Post subject: One in 10 children suffer abuse, say experts |
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One in 10 children suffer abuse, say experts
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The true scale of the maltreatment of children in the UK is revealed by child abuse experts today who say that one in 10 suffers physical, sexual, emotional abuse or neglect.
Unlike Baby P, who died in Haringey, north London, while on the at-risk register after months of abuse and neglect, most maltreated children are not even referred to the authorities.
Teachers, GPs and paediatricians have no confidence in the ability of social services to make a difference to their lives and fear the child's plight will be made worse if he or she is taken into care and placed in a foster family, they say.
A series of papers published today by the Lancet medical journal in collaboration with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health paints a grim picture of the unseen sufferings of an estimated 1 million children a year in the UK.
Between 4 and 16% of children suffer physical abuse, such as hitting, punching, beating and burning, according to a paper by Ruth Gilbert and colleagues from University College London's Institute of Child Health. The figures come from research in high-income countries, including the UK, which is not thought to differ from the average.
Some 5-10% of girls and 1-5% of boys have been subjected to penetrative sex, usually by a family friend or relative. If sexual abuse is defined more widely - as anything from being shown pornographic magazines to rape - it is estimated that it will include at least 15% of girls and 5% of boys.
Around 10% of children suffer emotional abuse every year, the paper says, which includes persistently being made to feel worthless, unwanted or scared. More still - up to 15% a year - suffer neglect, defined as the failure of their parents or carers to meet the child's basic emotional or physical needs or ensure their safety.
Those like Baby P who are picked up by the social services and placed on the at-risk register are only the tip of the iceberg. The plight of fewer than one in 10 maltreated children is investigated and substantiated by child protection services.
The experts underline a key finding from the case of Baby P - that professionals are not communicating and sharing their suspicions.
Lancet editor Richard Horton said the findings, which had taken a year to reach publication, had "huge significance for considering an appropriate and measured response to the findings around Baby P".
He added: "What this report does emphasise is the extent of the risk factors and consequences of child maltreatment, which are of such complexity that any reflex attempt to apportion blame or think there is a simple solution to this issue is to completely misrepresent the extent and depth of the problem."
The papers also expose the paucity of evidence behind the decisions taken by health professionals and social workers. Far more research is needed into finding out what will prevent a child being abused. "We don't know how effective existing practice is," said Jane Barlow, professor of public health in the early years at Warwick University, co-author of the paper on interventions. "These are some of the most vulnerable children out there in society."
In a Lancet commentary, Dr Horton says the series "will unfortunately not halt the blight of child abuse, because the phenomenon is too common, too surreptitious and too deeply rooted in deprivation and other social ills - but we nonetheless hope to raise awareness of the scientific evidence that is available, and indeed essential, to guide paediatricians and other professionals in their practice with children who might have been abused and to help bring a new logic and clarity to public debate about this contentious area."
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The estimate of sexual abuse is just horrendous, for starters.
Here's a link for those who may be curious about Baby P. The UK is obsessed with this case at the moment, and it may result (hopefully) in improvements in detecting and acting upon suspicions of child abuse. |
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PeteJB
Joined: 06 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 1:57 am Post subject: |
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| Don't read the guardian, mate. It's full of crap, and this is one of them. Those estimates are way off the chart and is just another sign that the UK government is really spinning out of control with it's extreme policies and scaremongering. I believe the scaremongering situation is worse than the US because it's a small country. I've seen the effects these kind of 'estimates' have on perfectly normal families - turning them into people afraid of everything. More on that later. Being made to feel worthless? I must be in that 10% then, because I often felt that way as a child. These stats are blown up. Bad things happen, yes, but not on this scale. 10% is a false figure attempting to get into the minds of the populace so the government can further control your lives. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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PeteJB
Joined: 06 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 4:29 am Post subject: |
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| Well this really depends on the methods used for interviewing and how they reach the conclusion that a case can be considered 'abuse'. Since the Lancet does not offer free access to their full reports, it's not clear. What you are reading has been filtered through a journalists eyes. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 7:19 am Post subject: Re: One in 10 children suffer abuse, say experts |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| The estimate of sexual abuse is just horrendous, for starters. |
No need to get all up in arms about that.
The definitive meta-analysis of the subject was published by the American Psychological Association in 1998 in their most prestigious journal, Psychological Bulletin, in an article entitled "A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples."
Here's the abstract:
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Rind B, Tromovitch P, Bauserman R.
Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122, USA. [email protected]
Many lay persons and professionals believe that child sexual abuse (CSA) causes intense harm, regardless of gender, pervasively in the general population. The authors examined this belief by reviewing 59 studies based on college samples. Meta-analyses revealed that students with CSA were, on average, slightly less well adjusted than controls. However, this poorer adjustment could not be attributed to CSA because family environment (FE) was consistently confounded with CSA, FE explained considerably more adjustment variance than CSA, and CSA-adjustment relations generally became nonsignificant when studies controlled for FE. Self-reported reactions to and effects from CSA indicated that negative effects were neither pervasive nor typically intense, and that men reacted much less negatively than women. The college data were completely consistent with data from national samples. Basic beliefs about CSA in the general population were not supported. |
Bold is mine.
In fact, if you read through the study you will see that in the majority of cases involving boys, outcomes ranged from neutral to positive. Obviously, this is not to say you should go out and have your kids boys abused by someone, but if it should happen, you may be causing them more harm by overreacting with hysteria, hyperbole, and alarm. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 8:29 am Post subject: |
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3177653.ece
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| Soros, 77, provided almost half the �50,000 cost of the research, which appeared in The Lancet, the medical journal. Its claim was 10 times higher than consensus estimates of the number of war dead. |
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| �In retrospect, it was probably unwise to have taken money that could have looked like it would result in a political slant. I am adamant this could not have affected the outcome of the research.� |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 9:02 am Post subject: |
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| I remember in my hometown there was a billboard that said 20% of Canadians have or will have a psychological disorder. That was a big moment for my libertarian development. Everything is bullshit. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
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| Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 9:42 am Post subject: |
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| Between 4 and 16% of children suffer physical abuse, such as hitting |
Does that include Mum or Dad giving a short spank on the arse, because I and most of my friends received such punishment, and I for one do not believe it constitutes 'abuse' but discipline. That is not to say, of course, that child abuse should not be treated as a serious problem.
This report reminds me of one I read some time ago about domestic violence, which reported that something like 1 in 3 women had suffered such abuse, which seemed like a horrendous figure. However, if the data was more closely scrutinised it was revealed that such violence also involved 'emotional' abuse, such as a man calling his wife a 'stupid bitch' in an argument. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 4:44 pm Post subject: Re: One in 10 children suffer abuse, say experts |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| The estimate of sexual abuse is just horrendous, for starters. |
No need to get all up in arms about that.
The definitive meta-analysis of the subject was published by the American Psychological Association in 1998 in their most prestigious journal, Psychological Bulletin, in an article entitled "A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples."
Here's the abstract:
| Quote: |
Rind B, Tromovitch P, Bauserman R.
Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122, USA. [email protected]
Many lay persons and professionals believe that child sexual abuse (CSA) causes intense harm, regardless of gender, pervasively in the general population. The authors examined this belief by reviewing 59 studies based on college samples. Meta-analyses revealed that students with CSA were, on average, slightly less well adjusted than controls. However, this poorer adjustment could not be attributed to CSA because family environment (FE) was consistently confounded with CSA, FE explained considerably more adjustment variance than CSA, and CSA-adjustment relations generally became nonsignificant when studies controlled for FE. Self-reported reactions to and effects from CSA indicated that negative effects were neither pervasive nor typically intense, and that men reacted much less negatively than women. The college data were completely consistent with data from national samples. Basic beliefs about CSA in the general population were not supported. |
Bold is mine.
In fact, if you read through the study you will see that in the majority of cases involving boys, outcomes ranged from neutral to positive. Obviously, this is not to say you should go out and have your kids boys abused by someone, but if it should happen, you may be causing them more harm by overreacting with hysteria, hyperbole, and alarm. |
I know two adult men who suffered rape as children. They are both pretty fucked up about it. One is in is fifties, and still cries about it.
From the link you posted, I immediately came across this:
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| B. Rind, P. Tromovitch, and R. Bauserman (1998) examined the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) by meta-analyzing studies of college students. The authors reported that effects "were neither pervasive nor typically intense" and that "men reacted much less negatively than women" (p. 22) and recommended value-neutral reconceptualization of the CSA construct. The current analysis revealed numerous problems in that study that minimized CSA-adjustment relations, including use of a healthy sample, an inclusive definition of CSA, failure to correct for statistical attenuation, and misreporting of original data. Rind et al.'s study's main conclusions were not supported by the original data. As such, attempts to use their study to argue that an individual has not been harmed by sexual abuse constitute a serious misapplication of its findings. |
It seems your study is not so sound.
Here is a list of studies that contradict the findings of your offering:
Association between Childhood Sexual Abuse History and Adverse Psychosocial Outcomes In controlled studies |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2008 6:52 am Post subject: Re: One in 10 children suffer abuse, say experts |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
From the link you posted, I immediately came across this:
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| B. Rind, P. Tromovitch, and R. Bauserman (1998) examined the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) by meta-analyzing studies of college students. The authors reported that effects "were neither pervasive nor typically intense" and that "men reacted much less negatively than women" (p. 22) and recommended value-neutral reconceptualization of the CSA construct. The current analysis revealed numerous problems in that study that minimized CSA-adjustment relations, including use of a healthy sample, an inclusive definition of CSA, failure to correct for statistical attenuation, and misreporting of original data. Rind et al.'s study's main conclusions were not supported by the original data. As such, attempts to use their study to argue that an individual has not been harmed by sexual abuse constitute a serious misapplication of its findings. |
It seems your study is not so sound.
Here is a list of studies that contradict the findings of your offering:
Association between Childhood Sexual Abuse History and Adverse Psychosocial Outcomes In controlled studies |
Come on now, you are not really going to use a mere comment in an attempt to refute a peer-reviewed study published in the APA's premier journal, are you? In fact, because of its controversial findings, the editors subjected it to an unprecedented second round of peer review which it also passed with flying colors. It actually stirred up quite a hornet's nest of reactions, but not because its methods were shoddy; on the contrary, because its methodology was impeccable and essentially irrefutable (although they sure tried).
Your list of articles supposedly refuting the meta-analysis comes from the Leadership Council for Mental Health, Justice and the Media, a group which
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| is composed mainly of professionals who advocate for the validity of repressed memories multiple personality disorder (MPD) as well as for recovered memory therapy as the means to treat these alleged problems. Central to this focus is the belief that CSA is pervasively and intensely traumatic and pathogenic -- a belief that our meta-analysis challenged. |
Rind, Bauserman, Tromovitch. Science versus orthodoxy: Anatomy of the congressional condemnation of a scientific article and reflections on remedies for future ideological attacks. Applied & Preventive Psychology 9:211-225 (2000). Cambridge University Press
Even David Finkelhor, an author in the first two articles on your list, admits that his opposition is based on morality, not science.
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Ultimately, I do continue to believe that the prohibition on adult-child sexual contact is primarily a moral issue. While empirical findings have some relevance they are not the final arbiter. [...]
Some types of social relationships violate deeply held values and principles in our culture about equality and self-determination. Sex between adults and children is one of them. Evidence that certain children have positive experiences does not challenge these values, which have deep roots in our worldview. |
Finkelhor, David. Response to Bauserman, Journal of Homosexuality, 20 - 1/2, 1990
The Rind meta-analysis remains the benchmark and credibly unrefuted in the peer-reviewed literature. |
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