THE DISINTEGRATION OF MARRIAGE,
FAMILY, AND THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY

SOURCE:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/1997/05/BG1115-The-Child-Abuse-Crisis

Published on May 15, 1997 by Patrick Fagan, Ph.D.

Far too many children are badly abused in the United States today. This disturbing fact–driven home by shocking stories on nightly television broadcasts – appears also in professional literature as analysts try to understand the causes of this problem and find a remedy for it. The growing empirical evidence on child abuse¹ reveals new, alarming, and distinct patterns of familial relationships that contribute greatly to this tragedy. The studies show that, along with a continual rise in the incidence of child abuse in the United States, there has been an increase in the number of children born out of wedlock and abandoned by their fathers, as well as an increase in the number of children affected by divorce. Now, in addition to poverty and community environment, the rising incidence of child abuse in the United States can be linked to one more factor: whether an abused child’s parents are married.

The underlying dynamic of child abuse–the breakdown of marriage and the commitment to love – is spreading like a cancer from poor communities to working-class communities. As social scientists, community leaders, and legislators consider ways to stop the spread of this cancer, they must focus their attention on the most upsetting byproduct of the disintegration of family and community: the abuse, maiming, and even death of America’s infants and young children, about 2,000 of whom–6 per day–die each year.

The Alarming Rise in Child Abuse

The best available estimates of child abuse in the United States are found in studies conducted by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). These National Incidence Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect, conducted in 1980 (NIS-1), 1986 (NIS-2), and 1993 (NIS-3),³ focused on reported and recognized cases of abuse (although they did not measure the actual incidence of abuse). According to NIS-3, child abuse and neglect increased by 67 percent between 1986 and 1993 (an average of almost 10 percent per year) and 149 percent between 1980 and 1993. Some of the biggest increases in recent times were reported in physical abuse (102 percent, or almost 15 percent per year) and sexual abuse (83 percent, or almost 12 percent per year).

• Abuse and Neglect of American Children Has Increased 134% Since 1980
  

Obtaining trustworthy estimates of the degree of abuse and neglect in the United States–situations that perpetrators try to keep hidden for as long as possible – is difficult. Scholars utilize various methods to generate estimates of abuse, and their estimates are not always similar. Consequently, serious disagreements about the true level of abuse exist.  Chart 2 is derived from data obtained from the 1996 NIS-3 survey report and illustrates the continuing rise in physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in the United States.

The effects of abuse are more readily observable: broken bones and bruises, scars from cigarette burns, swollen faces, and drastic changes in behavior. School teachers and doctors are often in a position to see these signs of abuse; but few see the signs of neglect in the passive child who is rarely talked to at home, or who may be locked up and left unfed, unclothed, and unwashed for long periods, or who must fend for himself. Changes in the neglected child’s body and behavior are slower and more easily mistaken for ill health or shy personality.

• The Promotion of Children Entering Broken Families Has More Than Quadrupled Since 1950
  

Research on the effects of neglect indicates that it has even deeper and longer lasting consequences than physical abuse. Richard Emery, Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, has noted that neglected children often are more seriously disturbed than abused children.7 The neglected child is treated more as if he were not there, or as if his parents wished he were not there, and this insidious and fundamental rejection can inflict deep psychological wounds. By contrast, physically abused children frequently are cared for in other ways by their abusers. They are given food, clothing, playthings, and even enjoy good times with others in the family.

The Demographics of Child Abuse

A survey of the professional literature shows that the three main types of abuse most commonly researched are physical abuse and, to a lesser extent, neglect and the trauma of children who have witnessed violence against their parents.⁸ According to the professional literature, child abuse in the United States exhibits definite demographic patterns:

• The safest family environment for a child is a home in which the biological parents are married. Contrary to current theory about the effects of marriage on children, recent research demonstrates that marriage provides a safe environment for all family members, one in which child abuse and fatality are lowered dramatically.
• Cohabitation, an increasingly common phenomenon, is a major factor in child abuse. Cohabitation implies a lack of commitment. The evidence suggests that a lack of commitment between biological parents is dangerous for children, and that a lack of commitment between mother and boyfriend is exceedingly so. The risk of child abuse is 20 times higher than in traditional married families if parents are cohabiting (as in “common law” marriages) and 33 times higher if the single mother is cohabiting with a boyfriend.
• The incidence of child abuse decreases significantly as family income increases. The impression that there is a high incidence of abuse among the very poor is reinforced by the results of research into child abuse. In 1993, the overall rate of maltreatment (abuse and neglect combined) in the United States was lowest in families with incomes above $30,000 per year; 10 times higher in families with incomes between $15,000 and $30,000 per year; and 22 times higher for families with incomes below $15,000 per year.
• Child abuse frequently is intergenerational. Another generation of child abusers is being weaned by today’s abusing parents, and many of these children will never know that children can be treated differently.
• Child abuse is prevalent in “communities of abuse” characterized by family breakdown. These also are communities of crime, characterized by the absence of marriage, the prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse, and a primary dependence on welfare. Children who grow up in these “communities” show signs of permanent damage; moreover, as statistics follow them over time, many prove to have been damaged for life. From these communities of abuse come society’s “super predators” (the psychopathic criminals of tomorrow), violent gang members, and other hostile, depressed, and frequently even suicidal young people.
• Child abuse is directly associated with serious violent crime. An increase in the incidence of child abuse precedes an increase in violent crime.
• 

Child Abuse: A Precursor to Crime

The increase in severe child abuse has another serious ramification. The evidence suggests that the United States will face increased levels of serious violent crime (murders, rapes, and assaults) at the hands of abused children when they reach their mid-to late-teenage years. According to Cathy Spatz Widom, Professor of Criminal Justice andPsychology at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Albany.

Early childhood victimization has demonstrable long-term consequences for delinquency, adult criminality, and violent behavior…. The experience of child abuse and neglect has a substantial impact even on individuals with otherwise little likelihood of engaging in officially recorded criminal behavior.

According to studies of the official records of abused children and arrested offenders, the association between child abuse and crime is significant: between 14 percent and 26 percent. But this association is roughly three times greater–from 50 percent to 70 percent–when researchers go beyond the official reports of child abuse cases and study the reports of abuse given by the delinquents them selves.

In one study, 26 percent of incarcerated delinquents who had committed murder had experienced physical abuse; they also were more likely than those who had not suffered abuse to have directed their violence toward members of their immediate families. In another report, of 14 juveniles condemned to death in the United States in 1986, 12 had been brutally abused as children, and 5 had been sodomized by relatives.

Moreover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime offers substantive insight into the background of a killer. The three most frequent factors in the history of a killer are physical or sexual abuse, a failure in emotional attachment to the mother, and a failure to use parents as role models. The connection between child abuse and violent crime should capture the attention of people across the political and social science spectrum. It cannot be ignored. Child abuse is costly to American society. Considering the increase in severe child abuse reported in NIS-3, the United States must be prepared to brace itself for the consequent rise in violent crime in the future.

What Can Be Done?

The underlying community dynamic of child abuse – the breakdown of the family – is spreading like a cancer from poor communities to working-class communities. The underlying demographics of abuse indicate a widening and worsening social infrastructure that is more and more incompatible with social order and for which an increasingly heavy price will have to be paid: serious crime and crime-control costs; addictions and addiction rehabilitation (and related crime costs); robbery, theft, and expanded prisons to contain the robbers and thieves; and a growing demand for drugs and all of the attendant problems associated with the drug culture and industry.

The leading indicator of an increase in these problems tomorrow is their byproduct today: the abuse of young infants and young children. Today’s abused children will be among tomorrow’s most dangerous criminals. The United States therefore has a serious and escalating social problem, the consequences of which will be borne not only by the children who suffer terribly from abuse, but also by all of society, which will have to deal with their vicious anger, debilitating depression, and various addictions. The country can take little solace from the hope that this is just a passing demographic blip that must be endured until it fades.

State and federal policy makers cannot solve deep moral or cultural problems; but they can illuminate the problems that must be addressed, and they most certainly can improve policies that rescue children from dangerous environments and place them in safe families. Specifically, Congress should:

1. Sharpen the debate by improving the quality of federal research. The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) should be directed to review the records of children who died of abuse within the past three years and delineate the family structure involved.
2. Commission the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to gather marriage and family background data in the next National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4).
3. Ensure that federal statistical agencies gather the marital background data for respondents in all social and economic surveys. These data would provide the best resource for future studies of child abuse and crime.
4. Enact legislation promoting the protection and safety of children in positive family environments. One bill that seeks to do so is the Adoption Promotion Act of 1997 (H.R. 867).

In addition, state officials should:

1. Focus the resources of state social service agencies on ways to separate seriously abused children permanently from continually abusive parents.
2. Encourage the formation of separate social service units dedicated solely to the work of terminating the parental rights of abusing parents. At present, this work is expected of social workers who also are tasked with uniting the family unit.
3. Enact a strict 12-month timeline for adjudication of the long-term parental status of every child in foster care over the age of three, and a 6-month timeline for those under three.
4. Set aside a pool of money to be used as bonus awards for the directors of child protective service units who reduce the incidence of child abuse in their areas the most.
5. Enact laws requiring child welfare agencies to initiate adoption proceedings for children abandoned by their parents for 3, 6, or 12 months, depending on the age of the child.
6. Privatize adoption services at the state level.
7. Prohibit the removal of children from their foster parents if the foster parents are willing to adopt them, unless the children are being returned to their legal parents.
8. Promote comprehensive intervention in abusive situations by private social service agencies.
9. Mandate drug testing of pregnant mothers who are suspected of drug abuse, particularly cocaine abuse. South Carolina, for example, has reduced this problem by offering these mothers two choices: drug rehabilitation treatment or eventual prosecution.
10. Stop the practice by agency personnel of blocking transracial adoptions.
11. Promote the use of orphanages where appropriate.
12. Replace sex education in the schools with abstinence and marriage education.

THE EFFECTS OF FAMILY INCOME AND FAMILY STRUCTURE ON ABUSE

Something is seriously and deeply wrong with a society that has lost its ability to foster stable environments–especially two-parent families with married biological parents–within which children are loved and protected. The barometer of this failing is a vicious one: the increasing abuse of children and the related increase in violent crime.

Typically, the tendency has been to blame poverty for this increase, but there is more to the picture of child abuse in the United States. Research on the homeless and welfare recipients has found that over 40 percent of homeless mothers and housed welfare mothers were sexually molested at least once before they reached adulthood; nearly two-thirds of the overall sample were subjected to severe physical assault by an intimate as adults.

The Data on Abuse in the United States

The National Incidence Studies draw the sharpest distinctions between income groups on rates of abuse: In the United States, the poorest exhibit the highest rates of abuse.

The NIS-3 report, however, did not take into consideration the great differences in family composition across the three income groups it evaluated. At that time, major differences in the incidence of marriage within these same income groups did exist. When data from the second criterion are superimposed on the first, a disturbing picture emerges.

• The Incidence of Abuse Based on Family Incomes: 1993
  

• Illustrates the relationship for physical abuse;
• A similar relationship holds for the other types of abuse as well
  

• Relationships of Physical Abuse, Income, and Single Parent Family Structure
  

THE BURGEONING SUBCULTURE OF ABUSE

Americans today are gravely concerned about two great problems: the breakdown of traditional institutions and the deterioration of the country’s inner cities. Dangerous trends, including a rise in violent crime involving younger and younger children and a resurgence of drug abuse and addiction, afflict communities throughout the country. On top of this, there has been an alarming increase in the amount and intensity of serious child abuse. The subculture of abuse, once hidden behind closed doors, is visible in the breakdown of the institutions that strengthen community.

The High-Abuse Community

Some communities have much higher rates of child abuse than others. In these communities, marriage is less common, individual families are more isolated, alcohol abuse is widespread, and drug trafficking is high. Although men who are abusive tend to be so whether drunk or sober, the abuse is more predictable when they are drunk. There is an acceptance among men in high-abuse communities that abusing women is normal, even condoned. As the poverty and family structure data illustrate, family income in these communities generally is less than $15,000 per year. In addition, vacant housing and transience are high.

In 1980, records were requested on 240 women who had been committed to the California Youth Authority (CYA), the state agency for juvenile offenders…. Very few (seven percent) of these girls came from intact homes families…. By the time these girls were 16, their mothers had been married an average of four times, and there was an average of 4.3 children per family…76 percent of the girls came from families where there was a record of criminality…violence was present in many of these homes….

In the two parent families (mainly step families)…a great deal of conflict was present. Of these parents, 71 percent fought regularly about the children…. Conflict over the use of alcohol was present in 81 percent of the homes…. Many of the girls received very little positive feedback from parents in the home. Of the fathers who were present, 53 percent were viewed by parole officers as rejecting of the girl, as were 47 percent of the mothers. Rejection came in many forms…. The mothers appeared to be not only neglectful, but 96 percent were described as passive and 67 percent as irresponsible….

The mothers of the CYA wards tend to marry young, with 44 percent having had the ward by the time she was 18. These daughters tended to follow in their mothers’ footsteps and begin bearing children at an early age…. Parents often encouraged this behavior…. The mothers of the CYA girls did not know how to be mothers, for they were often children themselves when their children were born, and lacked the emotional resources to instill a sense of trust and security necessary for self esteem and growth. Over time, just trying to survive depleted whatever emotional resources they might once have had.

In the 17 years since this research was conducted, another generation of abused and neglected children has grown up in these conditions. In sharp contrast, the professional literature documents and reinforces what ordinary

Americans would expect:

that tranquillity and peace in the family and in the marriage help prevent delinquency.

The Abusing Family

Today, more Americans live in a manner that separates the bearing and raising of children from traditional marriage. This undermines the well-being of children. In 1950, for every 100 children born in the United States, 12 entered broken families, either by being born out of wedlock or through their parents’ obtaining a divorce that year. In 1992, for every 100 children born in the United States, 60 entered broken families. The picture is even worse if all the children who are aborted each year are taken into consideration. The United States increasingly is becoming a country of second-, third-, and even fourth-generation marriage-less “families.” In such circumstances, as the research shows, children are most likely to suffer abuse and neglect, and new subcultures of abuse are more likely to be established.

For abusing men, violence frequently is a way to regain what they see as their lost control of a relationship. Conflict over children is likely to provoke this sense of a loss of control, and even to lead a couple to blows.

Abusing Women.
Contrary to public perception, research shows that the most likely physical abuser of a young child will be that child’s mother, not a male in the household, although the mother’s plight often is complicated by her relationship with a cohabiting male. Abusive mothers frequently are isolated, and lack the parental and extended family or peer support that is necessary to maintain their self-esteem and to buffer the stress of raising children. Without this support, they often seek care and comfort from their children, treating these children as if they were older than they really are. When children fail to provide this support, the mother can become impatient, angry, and sometimes abusive, even when the child is only a crying infant. Others find any social stimulation from their babies (whether smiling or crying) to be much more irritating than normal mothers do. Their abuse in turn adds to their anxiety and feelings of helplessness. If the woman is a second-generation or later generation out-of-wedlock mother, or if she is a teenager, she is less likely to know what the appropriate expectations of a young child should be.

Child-abusing mothers tend to have a distorted view of their children. Not surprisingly, they judge them more negatively than do outsiders and tend to ignore their good points, focusing only on transgressions. Typically, they often see their children’s transgressions as more serious than they actually are. The good in their children they ascribe to circumstances, but the bad they ascribe to their character. They tell their children what not to do rather than what to do, and they use force and physical punishment much more frequently than do most other parents.

Child-abusing women also lack self-esteem and strength of will (termed “poor ego strength” by psychologists). They are more likely to be guided by their environment than by their own intentions (referred to as “greater external locus of control”). They are more depressed, feel rejecting of their children more often, withdraw from them often, use anger to control them, and in general show less affection toward them. The child rejected by the mother frequently gets the most abuse. Consider the tragic case of Devonta Young, killed early in 1996 in New York:

During his brief life, little Devonta Young’s mother beat him nearly every day, sometimes twice a day…. She’d use her fists, her shoes and occasionally a belt. Sometimes she would swing him through the air and sometimes she’d throw him onto a hardwood floor…. He weighed 20 pounds and had not gained a pound in the last year…. [He had] severe brain injuries, blows to his face, neck back and stomach…. The little boy was an outcast among Rose Young’s children…. [H]is siblings, who range from 6 months to 9 years were fed before he was and got larger portions…. They also got ice cream and other snacks when Devonta did not. None of the other children has shown signs of abuse…. [A]uthorities have said that Young felt Devonta reminded her too much of a hated ex-lover.

The abusing mother is more likely to function at a lower intellectual level–with less ability to reason and understand her children and with fewer appropriate ways to handle them–than the nurturing mother. John Bowlby of London’s Tavistock Institute, one of the world’s leading experts on the mother-infant relationship, concluded in a 1986 article that the absence of an early infant attachment between mother and daughter increases the likelihood that the daughter, as an adult, will abuse her own children.

The most likely causes of child abuse by a mother, in fact, can be traced to the violence and substance abuse present in the mother’s childhood, followed by the stress and discord in her current household. This is capped by her own victimization, and leads to increased illness and a hypersensitivity to the annoyances that children cause. In the period between her early experience with abusing parents and her later experiences with an abusing “mate,” the future abusing mother frequently becomes more aggressive and deviant, developing a hostile and rebellious way of acting. She will associate more with men of similar hostility and eventually will “marry” them, becoming an abused spouse herself.

Considering this type of family background, it is no wonder that abusing families and mothers often are the most isolated. Increasingly, this isolation is most evident in the poorest neighborhoods in the United States. According to the NIS-3 survey, these communities have the highest incidence of serious abuse.

Children are at risk of being abused if they are in families in which they see abuse. Thus, child abuse often is linked closely to abuse of the mother. Significantly, in one study, 90 percent of women residing in shelters for battered women and children said their children were in the same room or the next room while they were being abused. This is telling because abused mothers were eight times more likely to hurt their children when they were being battered than when they were safe from their violent partners.

Tragically, changes in community moral norms over the past five decades are reflected in the profile of the child-killing mother. As compared with her counterpart 50 years ago, the mother who kills her children today is younger, has more children, and exhibits less of a conscience. In addition, many of her children are born out of wedlock. The next generation of child abusers is being formed in this environment; many will never know that children can be treated differently.

THE EFFECTS OF ABUSE ON CHILDREN

Abuse affects boys and girls in different ways. Girls are less likely to show the effects in external behavior, but instead will have problems of low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, somatic complaints, mood swings, and lower levels of social skills. Boys suffer both internalizing problems and externalizing problems (such as hitting, cruelty to others, truancy, lying, stealing, skipping school, destroying things, and associating with bad friends who get into similar trouble) as well as lower levels of social skills.

Witnessing the Physical Abuse of Parents

Another lesson from the professional literature is clear: Witnessing conflict between parents, even married parents, hurts the child. The now-classic Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study, conducted by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck of Harvard in the late 1940s, found that the incidence of delinquent behavior was higher in intact homes characterized by a degree of conflict and neglect than it was in broken homes without conflict. The more frequent or intense the conflict, the more the child is hurt emotionally, and the more likely he or she is to become delinquent as an adolescent and violent as an adult. In fact, children who witness abuse are more likely to abuse spouses and children when they are adults than are children who suffer abuse themselves. One study indicates that children who saw their mother being abused, compared with those who did not, are 24 times more likely to commit sexual assault crimes, 50 times more likely to abuse drugs or alcohol, 74 times more likely to commit crimes against another person, and 6 times more likely to commit suicide.

Witnessing such abuse affects not only future behavior, but also present physical and mental health. Children with their mothers in shelters for battered women show a high incidence of health problems among infants and mood-related disorders among preschoolers. Boys have more behavioral “acting-out” problems, and girls tend to have more “emotional” problems (that is, they are more withdrawn and need to stay close to mother). Sometimes these young children are even suicidal.

Physical Abuse by Mothers

The person most likely to abuse a young child is the child’s own mother. Although physical acts of violence by the mother may seem very destructive psychologically, they become most destructive when the mother is not emotionally attached to her child. This lack of attachment can result in life-long damage to the child’s emotional life and capacity for developing social relations, weakening future relationships with peers, spouse, and offspring.

Physical abuse harms the child’s emotional and intellectual growth, leads to poor performance in academic areas, frequently distorts the child’s self-image and view of the world, and leads to depression and a weakened ability to regulate emotions. As a consequence, abused children tend to adopt distorted beliefs about social relations between people, such as the belief that all men are abusers or that the marriage relationship must be exploitative. Abused children tend to know they are different, and knowingly behave in ways likely to get them in trouble with others; they know they are unwanted, and even that they are less healthy physically than their peers.

Likelihood That Abused Children Will Become Abusing Adults

The evidence is aptly summarized by SUNY Professor of Psychology Cathy Spatz Widom: “Violence begets violence.” Witnessing or experiencing abuse and violence increases the likelihood that a child will become a violent adult. Children react to quarreling parents by disobeying, crying, hitting other children, and, in general, becoming much more antisocial than their peers.

The world does not respond favorably to this type of antisocial behavior, even in the little world of kindergarten. Ronald Simons, Professor of Sociology at Iowa State University, notes that “Ineffective parents produce aggressive first graders who are rejected by their peers and as a consequence must form friendships with other deviant youth.” Likewise, Gerald Patterson of the Oregon Social Learning Center writes that “Poor social skills, characterized by aversive or coercive interaction styles, lead directly to rejection by normal peers.” Patterson, a leading expert on parenting skills, also makes the point that peer rejection tends to be linked to “ineffective parenting”: “Specifically, early parent failures contribute to later skills deficits. Parent skills in solving family problems correlate significantly with measures of academic skill and peer relations.” The isolated mother in a very poor neighborhood has little opportunity to encounter and absorb effective skills.

As noted earlier, even men in college who witnessed or experienced domestic violence at an early age often begin demonstrating violent tendencies during courtship. Luckily, not all children who grow up witnessing abuse between their parents or experiencing abuse themselves go on to become abusers; however, approximately one-third of them do.

• Chart 9: Physical Abuse Has Increased 84% Since 1980
  

Effects of the Duration and Intensity of Child Abuse

Research shows that the longer the child experiences abuse, the more likely he or she is to become an adult abuser, and the more varied the forms of abuse, the deeper the effect will be. In addition, intense but unpredictable episodes can cause a massive increase in long-lasting fear and anxiety. The more these episodes occur, the more likely the child is to see hitting back as a form of reciprocal justice in the give and take of human relationships. Furthermore, the younger the child is when the abuse starts, the deeper the effects. Severe abuse that began before a child was 46 months old was more likely to induce Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), while abuse that started after the child was 61 months old was not likely to induce PTSD. Understandably, children who were less than 46 months old also were more likely to have mothers who exhibited symptoms of PTSD from their own past experience of abuse.

There are, it should be noted, circumstances that lessen the impact of abuse. If the consequences of abuse are small, or if the child does not like the aggressive parent or cohabiting adult, then there is less likelihood that a child will become an abuser as an adult.

Effects of Sexual Abuse

Child sexual abuse, from unwanted kissing and fondling to sexual intercourse, has numerous–and possibly some of the most debilitating–social effects on a child. Most sexual abuse takes place within the family setting, and most child sexual abuse is done by men, not women. Men who sexually abuse children frequently have histories of impoverished early infant emotional attachment to their mothers, desertion by fathers, family dissolution, and early departure from home. These deficits have increased significantly in recent decades and lead to severe emotional dependence on others later in life.

The social isolation of many at-risk families increases the likelihood of psychosexual distortions because the child has fewer opportunities to experience the good influence of other adults or the friendship of other children. This isolation also makes it easier for adults to hide even massive abuse. Last year, for example, an indictment with a total of 1,200 counts of abuse was handed down in Chicago against the father and mother of a 5-year-old boy and his three sisters, aged 10, 11, and 12: “Four children [were] beaten, sexually assaulted, injected with drugs and fed rats and roaches, over and over again…. At least every child was abused once a week. Everybody had sex with everybody.”

Particularly serious or prolonged abuse leads to higher rates of crime and delinquency. The FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime has noted that the three factors most frequently present in the development of a killer are (1) trauma in the form of physical or sexual abuse; (2) failure of the child to attach readily to his mother; and (3) failure of the parents to serve as role models for the developing child. In an abusing family, the likelihood that all three factors are operating is greater. Child sexual abuse also can play a major role in shaping the future sex criminal. The National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime has confirmed the association between early sexual abuse and later psycho sexual disorders.

As in physical abuse, the more frequent and severe the sexual abuse and the longer its duration, the more depressed and self-destructive the abused child becomes as an adult. Frequently, clinical depression is accompanied by PTSD and its attendant debilities. Furthermore, a sexually abused child feels less loved and accepted by God, has less trust in God, and is less likely to believe in God!!

About the Author

Patrick Fagan, Ph.D. William H. G. Fitzgerald Senior Research Fellow in Family and Cultural Issues