Shadowchild at 9:00 PM

Abuse.....how to define it?.......Guilt...where does it come from? It has always perplexed me what its like inside an abusive persons mind but then its something very simple, they think they control everything now mind its not just adults here I'm talking about kids too. It's in every layer of our culture and for many of us in our on homes.....hallways......bedrooms....the very fact is though that guilt and abuse often go hand in hand. This often happens with parents who didn't have good moral and physical boundaries as children and thus the really don't know anything better or even whats to far, its sad because some of them don't have a choice.

Worst of all is mental abuse because though it does not invade a person body it invades the mind, and in my observation the mind is the most fragile. I seen this in about 3 different cases one happens to be very close to me, what happens when someone is physically abused is much different then when the abuse is only targeted at the person's mind. A big factor in all of this is that it takes much longer to take over someones mind than there body. The end result being that the victim is completely helpless and even when they torn down they still come running back. Its hurts me some much to be in some of these situations because most of the time the victims don't even realize they are the victims, because it has gone on for so long that they can't ever remember thinking for themselves.

Lucky for some of us we grew up in families with heads on there bodies and treated us like normal growing children and adolescents. But the sad fact is for every child that grows in a healthy family there are 6 more children that grow up in an dangerous home.

for example in the US alone

• An estimated 906,000 children are victims of abuse & neglect every year. The rate of victimization is 12.3 children per 1,000 children

• Children ages 0-3 are the most likely to experience abuse. About 1 in 50 U.S. infants are victims of nonfatal child abuse or neglect in a year, according to the first national study of the problem in that age group done by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention along with The Federal Administration for Children and Families.

• 1,500 children die every year from child abuse and neglect. That is just over 4 fatalities every day.

• 79% of the children killed are younger than 4.
  
  The consequences of this:
  

• 80% of young adults who had been abused met the diagnostic criteria for at least 1 psychiatric disorder at the age of 21 (including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, & post-traumatic stress disorder)

• Abused children are 25% more likely to experience teen pregnancy

• 1/3 of abused and neglected children will eventually victimize their own children
  
  So if anybody thinks that this doesn't mean anything that they should be shot. It needs to stop but at the rate of down fall in our world today there is nothing we can do but save as many as we can and hope for the best.