Dan Neville (Limerick West, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on this serious issue. We are pleased to support the motion providing for a full and complete report.

Each year, thousands of children are traumatised by physical, sexual and emotional abusers or by care givers who neglect them, making child abuse as common as it is shocking. The scars can be deep and long-lasting, and they affect society as well as the abused children. Most of us cannot imagine what would make an adult use violence against a child. Indeed, the worse the behaviour, the more unimaginable it seems. However, the incidence of parents and other caregivers consciously or even willfully committing acts that harm the children they are supposed to be nurturing is a sad fact of human society that cuts across all lines of ethnicity and class. Regardless of whether the abuse is rooted in the perpetrator's mental illness, substance abuse or an inability to cope, the psychological result in terms of deep emotional scars and feelings of worthlessness are often the same for each abused child.

The four primary types of child abuse are physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect. While the first two categories receive the most attention, perhaps because they involve physical violence, neglect is by far the most common form of child abuse and accounts for more than 60% of all cases of child maltreatment. Neglect is a pattern of failing to provide for a child's basic needs to the extent that his or her physical and psychological well-being are damaged or endangered. In neglecting a child, the parents or care givers are simply choosing not to do their jobs. The three basic types of neglect are physical, educational and emotional. Physical neglect involves the failure to provide adequate food, clothing or hygiene, reckless disregard for a child's safety, refusal to provide or delay in providing necessary health care or abandoning children without providing for their care. Forms of educational neglect include permitting a child to miss too many days of school or refusing to follow up on obtaining services for a child's special educational needs. Emotional neglect is usually identified as inadequate nurturing and affection, permitting a child to drink alcohol or use recreational drugs, failing to intervene when the child demonstrates anti-social behaviour or refusing to provide necessary psychological care.

Physical child abuse comprises an act of aggression by an adult which causes injury in a child, even if the adult did not intend injury. Such acts of aggression include striking a child with the hand, fist or foot, or with an object; burning the child with a hot object; shaking, pushing or throwing a child; pinching or biting a child; or pulling a child by the hair. Acts of physical aggression of this nature account for between 15% and 20% of documented child abuse each year.

Many physically abusive parents and care givers insist that their actions are simply forms of discipline or ways to make a child learn to behave. This is not acceptable. Physically abusive parents have issues of anger, excessive need for control or immaturity that make them unable or unwilling to see their level of aggression as inappropriate.

Occasionally the very youngest children, even babies not yet born, suffer physical abuse. Due to the fact that many chemicals pass from a pregnant woman's system to that of a foetus, a mother's use of drugs or alcohol during pregnancy can cause neurological and physiological damage to her unborn child. I refer, for example, to the effects of foetal alcohol syndrome. Mothers can pass on drugs or alcohol in breast milk.

Another form of child abuse is shaken baby syndrome. The latter involves a frustrated care giver shaking a baby roughly to make it stop crying. A baby's neck muscles cannot support its head in the early stages of development and if the baby is shaken, its brain will bounce around inside its skull. This can cause damage which often leads to severe neurological problems and even death.

Sexual abuse accounts for approximately 10% of child abuse. An adult who sexually abuses a child or adolescent is usually a person the child knows and is supposed to trust such as a relative, a child care provider, a family friend, a neighbour, a teacher, a coach or a member of the clergy. More than 80% of sex offenders are known to their child or adolescent victims. It is important to understand that no matter what the adult says in defence of his or her actions, the child did not invite the sexual activity and the adult's behaviour is absolutely wrong. Sexual abuse is never the fault of the child.

Children are psychologically unable to deal with sexual stimulation. Even toddlers who have not formulated the idea that sexual abuse is wrong will develop problems as a result of over-stimulation. Older children who know and care for their abusers know that the sexual behaviour is wrong. However, they may feel trapped by feelings of loyalty and affection for the person abusing them. Abusers ensure that their victims do not tell and they threaten children with violence or ostracism. The shame associated with the sexual activity makes a child particularly reluctant to tell. When sexual abuse occurs within the family, children can be concerned that other members of their family will not believe them or, as is often the case, will be angry with them if they tell. The layer of shame that accompanies sexual abuse makes the behaviour doubly traumatising.

Children who have suffered sexual abuse often show no physical signs and the abuse goes undetected unless a physician detects evidence of forced sexual activity. There are, however, behavioural clues to sexual abuse. These include inappropriate interest in or knowledge of sexual acts; seductive behaviour; reluctance or refusal to undress in front of others; extra aggression or, at the other end of the spectrum, extra compliance; and fear of a particular person or family member. Children who use the Internet are also vulnerable to come-ons from adults on-line. Among the warning signs of on-line sex child abuse are if a child spends large amounts of time on-line, particularly at night; if there is pornography on his or her computer; if he or she is receiving phone calls from or making them to people his or her parents do not know; if he or she receives mail, gifts, or packages from someone his or her parents do not know; if he or she turns his or her computer monitor off or quickly changes the screen when someone enters the room; or if he or she becomes withdrawn from his or her family.

Emotional child abuse involves behaviour which interferes with a child's mental health or social development. One website describes it as "the systematic tearing down of another human being". Such abuse can range from verbal insults to acts of terror and is almost always a factor in the other three categories of abuse. While emotional abuse does not involve the infliction of physical pain or inappropriate physical contact, it can have more lasting negative psychological effects than either physical abuse or sexual abuse.

Examples of emotional child abuse include verbal abuse, which involves belittling or shaming a child by name-calling, making negative comparisons to others or telling a child that he or she is "no good", "worthless" or "a mistake" and habitual blaming, which involves telling him or her that everything is his or her fault; withholding affection, which involves ignoring or disregarding a child, and a lack of affection and warmth; extreme punishment, which involves actions that are meant to isolate and terrorise a child, such as tying him or her to a fixture or an item of furniture or locking him or her in a closet or dark room; and corruption, which involves causing a child to witness or participate in inappropriate behaviour, such as criminal activity, drug or alcohol abuse or acts of violence.

Emotional abuse can come not only from adults, but also from other children. I refer here to siblings, neighbourhood or school bullies and schools which permit a culture of social ostracism. There is a need for a full debate on bullying in the House, particularly in the context of the phenomenon of cyber bullying. The signs of emotional child abuse include apathy, depression and hostility.

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