NCJ Number
197464
Journal
Child Maltreatment Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Dated: November 2002 Pages: 303-311
Editor(s)
Mark Chaffin
Date Published
November 2002
Length
9 pages
Annotation
This study examined the variability in legal definitions and in identification rates for child emotional abuse and examined State laws to determine variations in their legal statutes for child emotional abuse and if the State laws correlated with reported child emotional abuse rates.
Abstract
Child emotional abuse has an intangible quality, relying on the skills of trained personnel to identify such abuse has occurred. The lack of clear and concise definitions of emotional abuse from child advocates has led to the legal community failing to adopt universal standards. This study hypothesized that in the absence of clear guidelines, individual States would develop vastly different laws leading to discrepancies in the rates of child emotional abuse from State to State. The study reviewed emotional, physical, sexual abuse, and neglect rates reported by the National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) for 1998. State laws governing the prosecution of emotional abuse cases were obtained from Westlaw, a computer-assisted legal research service. Rates of child emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect were calculated for each State using the reported number of victims of each abuse and the child population for 1998. Three conditions were required to exist in order for States to report cases of abuse to NCANDS: (1) the child abusers and childhood victims of abuse must be present in the State; (2) the State must establish a system of protective services to identify victims; and (3) the State legislature must give clear directives outlining the crimes of abuse and their handling. Results indicated that in 1998, 43 States reported child emotional abuse victims to NCANDS and 48 States reported child physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect victims. Child emotional abuse rates displayed more variation across State boundaries than the rates of either physical or sexual abuses but not neglect. State laws on emotional abuse from 42 States were categorized according to inclusiveness rating scores. No correlations were found between sociodemographics on rates of emotional abuse. A major study limitation was the bias introduced by the data set obtained from NCANDS. The study suggests that inconsistency of legal definitions of abuse may result in wide variations in identifying victims of emotional abuse. The study supported the need to develop clear consensus definitions to aid the legal community in adopting uniform inclusive statutes to protect children from emotional abuse.