Child abuse

Child abuse (also called child endangerment or child maltreatment) is physical, sexual, and/or psychological maltreatment or neglect of a child or children, especially by a parent or a caregiver. Child abuse may include any act or failure to act by a parent or a caregiver that results in actual or potential harm to a child and can occur in a child's home, or in the organizations, schools, or communities the child interacts with. The terms child abuse and child maltreatment are often used interchangeably, although some researchers make a distinction between them, treating child maltreatment as an umbrella term to cover neglect, exploitation, and trafficking. Different jurisdictions have different requirements for mandatory reporting and have developed different definitions of what constitutes child abuse, and therefore have different criteria to remove children from their families or to prosecute a criminal charge. As late as the 19th century, cruelty to children, perpetrated by employers and teachers, was commonplace and widespread, and corporal punishment was customary in many countries. But, in the first half of the 19th century, pathologists studying filicide (the parental killing of children) reported cases of death from paternal rage, recurrent physical maltreatment, starvation, and sexual abuse. In an 1860 paper, the great French forensic medical expert Auguste Ambroise Tardieu gathered together a series of 32 such cases, of which 18 were fatal, the children dying from starvation and/or recurrent physical abuse; it included the case of Adeline Defert, who was returned by her grandparents at the age of 8, and for 9 years tortured by her parents – whipped every day, hung up by her thumbs and beaten with a nailed plank, burnt with hot coals and her wounds bathed in nitric acid, and deflorated with a baton. Tardieu made home visits and observed the effect on the children; he noticed that the sadness and fear on their faces disappeared when they were placed under protection.