Child Abuse

During our training with Sister Harriet we learned a tremendous amount of important information regarding child abuse. One important fact we learned was that a victim of abuse is often abused by someone they know and trust. In the movies we watched, the children all knew their abuser and had trusted them at one point in their lives. The men we saw who were accused abusers also knew their victims very well. This fact is very important to remember, especially when working in a school. Although we might think that the students all trust their teachers, if we see something funny going on it is important to act on our gut feeling. The video we watched gave us several steps to follow if we think a student may be getting abused. The first thing to do would to confront the suspected abuser about the situation. If things don't change, we would want to call the abuse hotline and NOT the police. By calling the hotline your identity is protected. The hotline would then take the appropriate steps to call social services, the police, etc. We need to remember that it is better than to take action rather than wait and see what happens. A child may need our help. Child abuse cases keep coming up in the news today so learning more about it was very helpful. For example, both Syracuse University and Penn St. had cases in their athletic departments with reports of athletes and ball boys being abused. The main concern of all abuse cases is the safety of the children. We want to protect the kids in the school and never put them in harms way. It is important to remember that child abuse does happen but we can take actions to stop it.