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Child Abuse - Past and Present

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Submitted By dnthurst
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Child Sexual Abuse – Past, Present and Future
Donna Hurst
University of the Cumberlands
HSOL 331
April 13, 2013

ABSTRACT This paper explores the issue of child sexual abuse. Sexual abuse of a child has become a major social issue in not only the United States but the entire world. It is imperative that society learns all they can about this issue. As a whole, society needs to discover the indicators of sexual abuse, the appropriate ways to report suspected abuse and how to help those that have been abused so they are not continually victimized by their past.
This paper will explore child abuse and child sexual abuse in six parts. The first part will begin with the earliest references of child abuse as a whole. The second part will continue on to the emergence of the issue of child abuse on the social and political scene. The third part of this paper will show when and how sexual abuse first became recognized as part of the child abuse issue. The fourth part of this paper will move into the effects of child sexual abuse. The fifth part will cover child sexual abuse intervention methods and the sixth part will focus on the treatments available to help victims in the present as well as the future.

PART ONE: CHILD ABUSE’S PAST
In the ancient world, infanticide was common practice in nearly all cultures. Children were killed at birth if they did not seem fit. Fathers were permitted to kill their newborns if they deemed the child was abnormal. Children that showed signs of being physically handicapped were killed by order of the tribal elders by leaving the child out exposed to the elements. Midwives were instructed by physicians to kill children that were unfit. After the child was born, they’d examine the infant and if it wasn’t what they considered “normal,” the child was simply gotten rid of. Some of the worst instances of infanticide are depicted in

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