Made of Sand? Rediscovering Child Abuse and Society s Response
Date
2010
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Publisher
Ohio Northern University Law Review
Abstract
Description
It has long been recognized that stress, unemployment, and financial problems are risk factors for child abuse. Not surprisingly, as the economy has deteriorated, reports of and attention to child abuse have increased. Society has come a long way from the Mary Ellen Wilson era of the 1870s when the detection of child abuse was sporadic and random, with poorly-suited tools borrowed to craft a response. But child abuse has now for almost 150 years been widely recognized as a recurrent, pervasive problem with potentially tragic short- and long-term consequences for a staggering number of children that calls for a well conceived and executed societal response. The consensus is, however, that society is neither adequately preventing or identifying child abuse, nor appropriately responding to the needs of abused children. This Article provides an extensive and comprehensive review of society s response to child abuse, including legislative efforts to redress it.
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Keywords
Child abuse, Child welfare -- reporting, Investigation - child abuse