NCJ Number
186925
Date Published
2001
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This chapter provides an overview of the nature and prevalence of child abuse in Israel, as well as the response to it.
Abstract
A demographic profile of Israel, including the infant mortality rate, is followed by a brief case study of how the sexual abuse of a 3-year-old girl was identified early by her nursery school teacher and reported to the mother and child protection service; the intervention response is described. An historical review of the nature of child abuse in Israel includes a description of attitudes toward the problem of child abuse in Israeli society. A description of the legal framework pertinent to child maltreatment is followed by a documentation of the increase in reported cases of child abuse and neglect. Remaining sections of the chapter consider child protection measures as well as investigative and treatment issues. The diversity of social and cultural attitudes toward child abuse among different groups in Israel, as well as the "conspiracy of denial" that persists, make it difficult to reach a shared workable definition of the problem. This lack of a shared definition of child abuse hampers attempts to study the problem's actual prevalence, identify its characteristics and risk factors, and understand the ways in which these characteristics and risk factors operate. Still, laws have been amended to protect children from abuse; professionals of various disciplines are now committed to recognizing, detecting, and reporting suspected cases of abuse; and the role the child protection systems plays in the treatment of these cases has been expanded; however, additional resources are required to make the protective and intervention structure work. 5 tables and 19 references