Child Maltreatment Assessment-Volume 2: Sexual, Emotional, and Psychological Abuse

By Debra Esernio-Jenssen, Ruchita Doshi and Randell Alexander

Child Maltreatment Assessment Volume 2 serves to help readers identify and interpret sexual, emotional, and psychological forms of abuse in children by providing chapters on the topics of sexual abuse, neglect and abandonment, torture, and more. While sexual abuse typically has some physical indicators, many cases of emotional and psychological abuse do not. By providing detailed examples and descriptions of abusive scenarios and injuries that readers may encounter in the field, this workbook aims to better prepare experienced professionals and students alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: STM Learning
• Release date: Aug 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781953119100

Debra Esernio-Jenssen

Debra Esernio-Jenssen, MD is currently working at Lehigh Valley Reilly Children’s Hospital in the field of Child Protective Medicine. In 2009 she was certified by the American Board of Pediatrics in Child Abuse Pediatrics. From 1998 to April 2010, she was the Director of the Child Protection Center at Schneider Children’s Hospital and the Chair of the Child Protection Consultation Team at Long Island Jewish Hospital in New Hyde Park, New York. Debra is recognized both nationally and internationally for her work in child abuse and child abuse prevention.

Book preview

Section I

DEFINITIONS

OBJECTIVES

After reviewing this section, the reader will be able to:

1.Clearly identify and define key terms related to child maltreatment.

2.Accurately apply terms when analyzing cases of child maltreatment.

INSTRUCTIONS

The following terms are found throughout the text. This section should serve as a convenient reference for readers as they move through the chapters.

—Cause of Death: The disease or injury that creates the physiologic disturbance that leads to death.

—Child Abuse: Any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse, or exploitation.

—Child Protective Services (CPS): The government agency responsible for protecting children, which includes intervening in cases of maltreatment.

—Child Sexual Abuse: When a child engages in sexual activities that they cannot comprehend, for which they are developmentally unprepared and cannot give consent to, and/or that violate the law or social taboos of society. May include anogenital contact to or by a child or other noncontact activities such as exhibitionism, voyeurism, exposing the child to pornography, or using the child in the production of pornography.

—Child Torture: A longitudinal period of abuse characterized by at least 2 elements of physical abuse and psychological or emotional abuse.

—Chlamydia: The most common bacterial STI; caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis. Infection can persist for months to years and progress to pelvic inflammatory disease in older girls.

—Coaching: A tool employed by the abusers in order to have the victim, knowingly or unknowingly, cooperate and validate the false allegations provided by said abuser.

—Computed Tomography (CT) Scan: Common diagnostic imaging procedure that uses x-rays to generate images of the anatomy.

—Condylomata Acuminata: Flesh-colored warts that appear papular, flat, or cauliflower shaped. Caused by infection with HPV.

—Contusion: Also known as bruise; a region of injured soft tissue in which blood vessels have been ruptured as a result of blunt trauma.

—Denying Emotional Responsiveness: A form of psychological abuse; occurs when a caregiver is detached or uninvolved and/or provides little to no warmth, nurturing, or praise during a child’s developmental period.

—Depersonalization: Persistent or recurrent experiences of feeling detached from, and as if one were an outside observer of, one’s mental processes or body.

—Derealization: Persistent or recurrent experiences of unreality of surroundings (eg, the world around the individual is experience as unreal, dreamlike, distant, or distorted).

—Domestic Violence: Any abusive, violent, coercive, threatening, or forceful act inflicted by one member of a family or household onto another. This may include physical, emotional, economic, spiritual, and/or sexual abuse.

—Exploiting/Corrupting: A form of psychological abuse; refers to the modeling, permitting, or encouraging of antisocial or developmentally inappropriate behavior, restricting or undermining psychologic autonomy, or restricting or interfering with cognitive development.

—Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy: Treatment method that uses exposure and cognitive components to achieve the goal of desensitizing the emotional intensity of a traumatic event. It utilizes bilateral stimulation, typically rapid eye movement, while the child focuses on their traumatic experience. There are 8 phases.

—Failure to Thrive: When a child’s weight/size is below average compared to others their age.

—Fat Embolism: Occurs when a piece of intravascular fat lodges within a blood vessel and blocks blood flow.

—Gonorrhea: Caused by infection with Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The incubation period is 2 to 7 days.

—Hemorrhage: Bleeding or an abnormal flow of blood; could be external (ie, outside the body) or internal (ie, inside the body).

—Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV): A chronic viral infection with ulcerative or vesicular lesions that reoccur (ie, genital herpes).

—History: A record of information pertaining to a person’s health (eg, height, weight, allergies, medications, etc.) or the given explanation for an injury (eg, the provided history was that the child fell from a tree).

—Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV): A retrovirus that causes AIDS. It includes progressive failure of the immune system, allowing life-threatening opportunistic infections and diseases to thrive.

—Human Papillomavirus (HPV): An infection that commonly causes genital warts that appear popular, flat, or cauliflower shaped.

—Hypoxia: Occurs when an oxygen deficiency deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, typically in cases of strangulation. Characterized by tachycardia, hypertension, dizziness, and mental confusion.

—Identification Evidence: Includes biological materials (eg, sperm, seminal fluid, other body fluids, cellular material, etc.) that contain DNA material that can be used to identify the abuser.

—Isolating: A form of psychological abuse; includes confining a child within their environment and/or restricting their social interactions within the