There is no greater insight into the future than recognizing when we save our children, we save ourselves.

What is
Child Abuse?

To many, child abuse is narrowly defined as having only physical implications.
In reality, child abuse includes:
• Physical abuse, unlawful corporal punishment or injury.
• General and severe neglect.
• Sexual abuse, sexual assault, exploitation
• Willful harming or endangering a child, emotional maltreatment.
Child abuse may involve multiple categories in each family.
They include both (overt) acts and omissions.

Competent assessments and interventions must consider evaluating multiple categories of abuse.
The act of inflicting injury or the failure to act so that injury results, is the basis for making the decision to intervene. A parent or caretaker may begin by inflicting minor injuries, then may increasingly cause more serious harm over a period of time.

Therefore, detecting the initial small injuries and intervening with preventive action may save a child from future permanent injury or death.
Physical injuries, neglect and malnutrition are more readily detectable than the subtle and less visible injuries that result from emotional maltreatment or sexual abuse.
However, all categories of abuse endanger or impair a child’s physical and/or emotional health and development and demand attention.
Certain persons, known as mandated reporters, are required by law to report any known or suspected instance of child abuse.
Everyone else may report child abuse and neglect.

Indicators for suspected child abuse are presented in this publication to assist mandated reporters in meeting their responsibilities under the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act.
One of the most important indicators for suspecting child abuse is when a child tells someone that he or she has been abused.
When a child tells a particular person who is an individual required to report child abuse, the communication is not privileged.
That individual, by law, must report what the child has related to him or her.
An only exception is when the information is relayed during “penitential communication.

” A clergy member who acquires knowledge or reasonable suspicion of child abuse during penitential communication is not required to report abuse or neglect. Penitential communication is the communication, intended to be in confidence, including but not limited to, a sacramental confession, made to a clergy member who, in the course of the discipline
or practice of his or her church, denomination, or organization, is authorized or accustomed to hear those communications, and under the discipline, tenets, customs, or practices of his or her church, denomination, or organization has a duty to keep those communications secret.

In addition, and in the recent past, “any custodian of records of a clergy
member” were made mandated reporters and are now required to report child abuse and neglect. Mandated reporters who report suspected child abuse cases have immunity, both civilly and criminally, for making reports.

( Child Abuse Prevention Handbook )

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