Child Abuse: Causes And Underreporting

Child abuse is a rampant problem in America. The numbers of reported cases have risen the past few years. However, there are still problems getting school counselors and emergency room medical workers to report abuse because it often goes unnoticed. A school counselor might not have a good enough relationship with their students to report. The students will most likely not report abuse to a counselor with whom they do not have a good relationship (Bryant, Milsom, 2005). A nurse in an emergency room may not realize that the child who was brought in with a head injury was a victim of abuse, rather than just an accident. And because the nurse does not want to cause a police investigation of a completely normal family who merely did the right thing by bringing their hurting child into the emergency room, he or she does not report the incident (Weinbach, 1975).

Prevention seems to be the best answer for child abuse. If a parent is taught how to deal with their own emotions and the proper behaviors for a child of a particular age, they are less likely to commit actions of abuse against their child. The problem of reporting could also be helped through education. If hospitals kept case files on children, they are more likely to notice a pattern of injuries in a particular child that should call for an investigation. Not all odd injuries are abuse "children do, on occasion, fracture an arm while climbing into a moving clothes dryer, but they rarely do it a second or third time." (Weinbach, 1975). However, if the injuries continue, it is a possibility that the child is being abused. If the hospital had kept detailed records of the child's past emergencies, they might notice the pattern and realize a need to report this to the authorities.

The articles written on reporting and preventing child abuse use similar sorts of ethos. Authors state their credentials, often they are doctors or professional researchers in the subject of children. They state this either within the article itself, or in a short description near the article. The authors are listed as professors and researchers from major universities, or this credential is implied by the author's presumed experience. For example, in Case Management for Child Abuse by Robert W. Weinbach, the author implies that he has experience in hospital emergency rooms and dealing with situations that may or may not be abuse. Weinbach does not come out and say that he does, but implies it with his language. The pathos used in the articles is based mainly on the use of striking language. As in the formerly mentioned article, the author uses phrases like "Ð'...revealed an alarming degree of ignorance and even apathy among hospital administrators." (1975). In the article Infant Crying and Abuse by Sijmen A. Reijneveld, et al, there is little pathos used, as the article is the findings of a study done in the Netherlands. This is also true for the article Child Abuse Reporting by School Counselors by Jill Bryant and Amy Milsom. This article was a report on a study done in a Midwestern state about the mandatory reporting habits of school counselors in the area.

In Weinbach's editorial, he is speaking to hospital administrators and talking about how they need to change the way their hospitals are run in order to make it safer and easier to correctly report instances of child abuse. In Bryant and Milsom's article, they are speaking to counselors themselves, and the people who train counselors to do their jobs correctly. In the article about infant crying leading to abuse, the authors are speaking to people who educate parents. They are trying to get information to new parents so that parents will no longer use abuse as a way of stopping what they view as excessive crying.

In both the case of Reijneveld and Bryant's articles, these authors build credibility by using the fact that they are professors at universities. They also build credibility just because the information they are putting forth is a part of a study done on the particular issue the articles are discussing. Because they are both studies done by leading universities, it is easier to trust the results of these studies as applicable and relevant, as well as unbiased. Weinbach builds credibility through a little sentence after the article stating that he is a professor in the College of Social Work at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. He also creates credibility through the voice he uses. He comes off as someone who has experience and knows what he's talking about through his diction. For example "A frequent rationalization is that Ð''I can be sued if I am proved wrong.' An examination of legislation reveals that this fear is, in fact, unfounded." Weinbach sounds here like he has done the examination of the law himself to prove that if a nurse or doctor were to report suspicion of abuse that happened to be wrong, they would be liable to be sued (1975).

The claims of these articles, though all relate to child abuse, are not really connected. Both the Weinbach article and the Bryant article deal with different situations where reporting of child abuse does not occur nearly as often as it should and for very different reasons. The Reijneveld article, however, discusses a main cause of the physical abuse of infants. The main claim of the Weinbach article is that hospitals have sadly underreported the cases of abuse because cases are hard to identify, and medical professionals are reluctant to report suspected abuse. The Bryant article also claims that professionals, in the counseling profession, are reluctant to report suspected abuse. However, this author claims that it is mainly because of a lack of meaningful relationship with the students that causes this issue to be underreported. They claim that students without closer relationships with their counselors are unlikely to report abuse to them. Because the counselors do not see the child when they are in need of medical attention as a result of the abuse, they are often unaware and miss