Emotional Abuse Indicators
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Rejection
Rejection occurs from a refusal to acknowledge a person's presence, value or worth, It is achieved by communicating to a person that she or he is useless or inferior and by devaluing that person's thoughts and feelings. For example, continually treating a child differently from siblings in a way that is unfair and suggests dislike for the child.
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Degradation
This occurs from the use of insulting behaviour, such as ridiculing, name calling, imitating and infantilizing. It aims to diminish the dignity and self-worth of the person, and affects their sense of identity in a demeaning way. Examples include: yelling, swearing, publicly humiliating or labelling a person as stupid; mimicking a person's disability; or treating someone as though they were much younger than they are and preventing them from making normal decisions.
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Terror
This is the evocation of extreme fear in a person, done by coercion through intimidation. It can include placing or threatening to place a person in an unfit or dangerous environment. Examples include: making a child watch violence perpetrated on people the child cares about or a pet; making threats to abandon or kill a child; threatening to damage a person's possessions; stalking.
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Isolation
Isolation is the limiting of a person's freedom to engage in normal association with others. It may involve physical confinement. Examples include: preventing an older child from participating in decisions about their own life; locking a child in a cupboard or in a room alone; disallowing a partner or older child from using their own money or making financial decisions; withholding contact with grandchildren; depriving a person of mobility aids or transport.
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Corruption and Exploitation
Corruption involves training a person to accept ideas or behaviour that is illegal or transgresses cultural mores. Exploitation involves using a person for advantage or profit. The grooming of a child to serve the interests of the abuser rather than those of the child may occur prior to actual exploitation. Examples include: child sexual abuse; permitting a child to use alcohol or drugs or see pornography; or enticing a person into the sex trade.
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Emotional Unresponsiveness
This entails the failure to provide care in a sensitive and responsive manner and is manifested by being detached and uninvolved, interacting only when necessary and ignoring a person's mental health needs. Examples include: ignoring a child's attempt to interact; failure to show a child affection; treating someone as though they are an object, "a job to be done".
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Emotional Abuse Indicators
Emotional abuse can be difficult to observe when it is perpetrated in the privacy of someone else's home, or in a closed institution. However, personal awareness and understanding of the issue is key to recognizing it. The following is a list of possible indicators of emotional abuse:
depression
withdrawal
low self-esteem
severe anxiety
fearfulness
failure to thrive in infancy
aggression
emotional instability
sleep disturbances
physical complaints with no medical basis
inappropriate behaviour for age or development
overly passive/compliant
suicide attempts or discussion
extreme dependence
underachievement
inability to trust
stealing
other forms of abuse present or suspected
feelings of shame and guilt
frequent crying
self-blame or self-deprecation
delay or refusal of medical treatment
discomfort or nervousness around career or relative
substance abuse
avoidance of eye contact
http://www.thisisawar.com/AbuseEmotional.htm SEEING OR HEARING ABUSE OF THOSE CLOSE TO ONE CAN BE EMOTIONAL ABUSE TOO
if you suspect/know someone is being abused
- Listen;
- Believe;
- Support;
- Let the person know about available support services; and
- Report suspected or known child abuse or neglect to a child welfare agency or the police.
Sleep deprivation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Sleep deprivation is an overall lack of the necessary amount of sleep. A person can be deprived of sleep by their own body and mind, insomnia, or actively deprived by another individual. Sleep deprivation is sometimes used as an instrument of torture.
Lack of sleep may also result in irritability, blurred vision, slurred speech, memory lapses, overall confusion, hallucinations, nausea, psychosis, and eventually death.
Sensory deprivation:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_deprivation Sensory deprivation is the reduction of sensory input into the human system, whether naturally occurring or induced. Simple artificial systems can reduce visual and auditory input while more complex designs can also reduce olfactory, tactile, thermoceptive, gustative and 'gravitational' sensations. Sensory deprivation has been used in various alternative medicines, for torture or punishment, and in psychological experimentation
In 1978 in the European Court of Human Rights trial "Ireland v. the United Kingdom" the facts were not in dispute and the court published the following in their judgement:
These methods, sometimes termed "disorientation" or "sensory deprivation" techniques, were not used in any cases other than the fourteen so indicated above. It emerges from the Commission's establishment of the facts that the techniques consisted of:
(a) wall-standing: forcing the detainees to remain for periods of some hours in a "stress position", described by those who underwent it as being "spreadeagled against the wall, with their fingers put high above the head against the wall, the legs spread apart and the feet back, causing them to stand on their toes with the weight of the body mainly on the fingers";
RAPE:
Rape
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape For other uses of the word rape, see Rape (disambiguation).
Rape is a crime wherein the victim is forced into sexual activity against his or her will, in particular sexual penetration. It is considered, by most societies, to be among the most severe crimes.
Custodial rape
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Custodial rape is a form of rape which takes place while the victim is "in custody" and constrained from leaving, and the rapist(s) are an agent of the power that is keeping the victim in custody. While some definitions of custodial rape define it as taking place in a state-owned institution, and perpetrated by a state agent [1] (
http://www.stopvaw.org/Custodial_Sexual_Assault.html), the term more generally encompasses any situation where the power of a state agent is used to enable rape; thus, when prisoner-on-prisoner rape happens as a result of neglect by the prison authorities, it may be considered custodial rape.
Effects
A proportion of violent sexual assaults end with the death or serious injury of the victim. Other consequences can include pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.
The most common effect of rape on victims is psychological. In the past, survivors of rape and sexual assault were often diagnosed with Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS), then considered an psychological disorder. RTS is no longer considered a diagnosis, but rather a set of normal psychological and physiological reactions that a victim is likely to experience. These include, but are not limited to, feelings of guilt and shame, tension, anger, eating disturbances, and sometimes depression. The reactions are very similar to those that would be experienced by a survivor of any other traumatizing experience. The psychological trauma is cited as one of the reasons that rape is usually not reported to the authorities.
Because of the sexual nature of rape crimes, victims often suffer serious psychological trauma. This is especially true in societies with strong sexual customs and taboos. For example, a woman (and especially a virgin) who is raped may be deemed "damaged" by society: she may suffer isolation, may be prohibited to marry, be divorced if she was married or even killed. She may also feel "dirty" or as if the crime was her fault.
The process to denounce and eventually convict an offender is often hindered by similar psychological effects. Victims frequently feel shame when describing what has happened (especially if the victim is male or a female victim must report the incident to a male law officer). Also, the intimate questions and medical examinations required for prosecution can make the victim uncomfortable. In societies that do not accord equal civil rights to women and men, this process is even more difficult for female victims.
Some dictionary definitions of the word rape include any serious and destructive assault against a person or community, but this article focuses primarily on sexual assault
