abstract: Child development scholars have demonstrated a host of negative outcomes of child physical abuse, including emotional problems, delinquency, and future victimization. However, it is unclear if child physical abuse during childhood is related to subsequent violent victimization during youth and young adulthood. Building on routine activity theory and prior research, and using data collected from 2,245 individuals in Changzhi, China, this study examines if the experience of child physical abuse is positively related to violent victimization in youth and young adulthood, and if the relationship between child physical abuse and violent victimization is mediated by an individual’s routine activities. The results from negative binomial regressions support routine activity theory. The implications of the findings for theory, research and practice are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Criminology and Criminal Justice 2016

INTRODUCTION: Child maltreatment is a significant public health problem that affects all countries and cultures alike. Child maltreatment, which includes neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse and sexual abuse, can result in negative consequences that are lifelong and irreversible. Previous studies have shown the prevalence of all forms of child abuse in India, which is also home to one fifth of the world’s children. However, adequate resources and efforts are not being made to understand the true scope of this problem. AIM: The present study utilized an existing measure, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), to understand how parents from the South Indian culture defined acceptable child rearing practices and physical and emotional child abuse. The items from the physical and emotional abuse subscales on the CTQ were also tested for validity and reliability. It was hypothesized that fathers would report higher scores on the physical abuse subscale and mothers would report higher scores on the emotional abuse subscale. It was also hypothesized that parents would find spanking to be an acceptable form of discipline and note that both child physical and emotional abuse are not prevalent in the South Indian community residing in the United States. METHODS: This study recruited 41 participants (21 mothers and 20 fathers) to complete the CTQ. Of the total number of participants, ten were randomly assigned to participate in an in-depth interview, which focused on how parents in the South Indian community in Georgia interpreted the items on the CTQ and how parents defined child physical and emotional abuse. Reliability and validity testing was conducted using data analysis software SPSS 23.0. Qualitative analysis of the interviews involved Consensual Qualitative Research, identifying common themes among all ten interviews. RESULTS: Quantitative analysis revealed low to moderate internal consistency for the emotional abuse scale (α = 0.65) and moderate to high internal consistency for the physical abuse scale (α = 0.88). Independent t-test results showed that fathers reported higher scores on both the physical and emotional abuse subscale; however, these results were not significant. Using the Consensual Qualitative Research method, six domains were determined from the interviews. These included: (a) parent perspectives on child rearing practices, (b) spanking as a discipline practice, (c) country differences between India and the United States regarding discipline, (d) prevalence of abuse among the South Indian community in the United States, (e) reporting child abuse, and (f) parents’ awareness of resources to develop parenting skills. A majority of participants reported spanking as an acceptable form of discipline and believed that neither child physical nor emotional abuse was prevalent in the South Indian community in the United States. CONCLUSION: This study serves as formative research and encourages further investigation of different forms of child abuse in Indian populations, specifically child physical and emotional abuse. Understanding how a culture views children and child rearing practices is important in determining how abuse is defined within said culture. Societies that are more lenient and accepting of violence in general are at a greater risk for perpetrating the maltreatment of children. Establishing a concise definition of child abuse will aid in the development of valid measures that will determine the actual scope of the problem and create solutions, such as laws and policies that will shift a society’s view on appropriate interactions with children.

Child maltreatment is extremely prevalent and leads to a host of negative effects, both immediately and long term. Instances of maltreatment are often accompanied by deception, both by the perpetrator, as well as by the victim in order to avoid stigma and protect family. Thus, this study investigated social learning of deception through instances of maltreatment. 413 young adults completed an online survey assessing current attitudes toward deception, childhood maltreatment including child sexual abuse, child physical abuse, witnessing interparental violence, psychological abuse, neglect and parental addiction, social support, and participant addiction. Results indicated that neglect and psychological abuse during childhood, and current addiction were associated with a positive attitude toward deception. Severity of CSA and severity of neglect each interacted with role (agent or target) in the deceptive scenario to determine attitude toward deception. Severity of CPA interacted with perceived social support to determine attitude toward deception. Furthermore, victim's awareness of deception by perpetrators of CSA was associated with a more negative attitude toward deception. These findings support both attachment theory and social learning explanations for adulthood attitude toward deception. Attachment theory explains why neglected and psychologically abused individuals find their own deception more acceptable and other's deception less acceptable than their non-neglected counterparts, and why the opposite pattern is true for victims of CSA; and social learning theory's emphasis on attention and reinforcement to motivate behavior are supported by these findings.

Child maltreatment, including physical abuse, neglect, emotional, and sexual abuse is a continuing social problem in the United States, resulting in a number of children who experience challenges with family and peer relationships in adolescence. Child neglect is one of the most common forms of abuse however, it is less likely to be investigated or substantiated than is physical abuse. Female child maltreatment in particular results in possible problems for victims with family and peer relationships in early adolescence. In 2015, state agencies reported an estimated 683,000 victims of child maltreatment, with two-thirds of this group representing child neglect victims. This study examined differences between reported child neglect and child physical abuse in predicting family and peer relationship problems among 12-year-old females. Relational theory provided a theoretical framework for this study's hypotheses. Records from the Midwest site of the LONGSCAN research project provided the archival data from a criterion sample of 68 12-year-old females. The hypotheses were there would be differences in adolescent mother-child and peer relationships between victims of neglect and victims of physical abuse. Data were analyzed using descriptive, correlational, and multiple regression analyses. The results of the analyses revealed the quality of the mother-child relationship was significantly related to both earlier neglect and to physical abuse. In the multiple regression, early child neglect was more predictive of the mother-child relationship in early adolescence than was child physical abuse. This study contributes to social change by directing those who develop and design policy and programs to place additional attention on child neglect interventions to promote family stability.

The home is supposed to provide support and safety for children but can also be the place where children suffer abuse and other adverse treatment by their parents. Violence against children in homes has been banned in Sweden for more than 30 years but it is still a considerable problem in the society and a threat to public health. The overall aim of this thesis was to create comprehensive knowledge of the phenomenon Child Physical Abuse (CPA) in Sweden after the ban on corporal punishment. The focus has been on examining the characteristics of cases reported to the police as well as self-reported CPA, prevalence of CPA and finally associations between CPA and health-problems/risk-taking behaviors among adolescents. Two samples are used in this thesis. The first comprises cases reported to the police during 11 years (n=142) in a Swedish police-district and the second is a population-based youth survey of the total number of pupils in three different school grades (13, 15 and 17 years old) in Södermanland County, Sweden. Cases of severe abuse constituted 14 % of the total number of cases reported to the police. The main difference between the group of severe cases and the remaining was the higher occurrence of convictions in court in the severe cases and the pattern of reporting to the police. The severe cases were reported by agencies to a greater degree than minor cases. Cases of severe abuse were characterized by an accumulation of risk factors in different areas as perpetrator factors, stress- and strain factors, factors of insufficient social network and finally child-related factors. In the cross-sectional study a prevalence of 15 % was found for self-reported CPA (n=8 494). There were associations between risk factors in different areas and abuse and there was a dos-response relationship between risks and reported abuse. It was shown that children who reported parental intimate-partner violence were at considerably higher risk for CPA than other children and that only 7 % of the children exposed to violence had disclosed this to authorities. The study of associations between health and risk-taking behaviors, were performed among the 15 and 17 years old pupils (n=5 933). Associations with health-problems and risk-taking behaviors were shown and the associations became stronger when the pupils reported repeated abuse. Finally there was a cumulative effect of multiple abuse in the form of being exposed to child physical abuse plus other types of abuse (parental intimate partner violence, bullying and being forced to engage in sexual acts) and the associations increased with the number of concurrent abuse.

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Child maltreatment is not a new issue. It has existed in various forms in every society since the early days in history. However, it is only in the past four decades that abuse and neglect of children has attracted widespread interest among health professionals and the general public. There is now a large body of evidence that identifies four main maltreatment forms: physical, sexual, emotional maltreatment and neglect. Child maltreatment is a substantial public health problem, as it is associated with immediate and long-term health problems. Most research into child maltreatment has been conducted in English-speaking, developed countries. Although there has been a small but steady increase in the number of studies from less developed countries over the past decade, there remains a relative dearth of research in these populations, especially in Asia. Over the years, most research projects around the world tend to be focused on only one type of child maltreatment (usually either child sexual abuse or child physical maltreatment), and many studies do not examine risk factors in depth, or address the possible outcomes of various forms of maltreatment. Children have always held a very important place in the culture and traditions in Vietnam. In 1989, Vietnam was the first Asian country and the second country in the world to sign and ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Since then Vietnam has adopted various measures to promote children's rights and particularly children's rights to be protected from abuse and exploitation. Despite strong political support for the rights of children, there is little formal research into child maltreatment. From the small amount of available evidence and media reports, it appears that children in Vietnam are vulnerable to maltreatment, just as they are all over the world. It is clear that information about the extent and health consequences of different forms of child maltreatment from scientifically sound studies is still far from sufficient. Thus, more research is essential to ensure effective and culturally appropriate responses to protect children from maltreatment. The primary aim of this research was to examine the nature and co-occurrence of four forms of child maltreatment including sexual, physical, emotional maltreatment and neglect among Vietnamese secondary and high school adolescents in both urban and rural settings, and determine the extent to which such adverse experiences impact on self-reported health risk behaviours and physical and mental health. A mixed methods design including qualitative interviews and focus group discussions, and a cross-sectional survey was employed in this study. Incorporation of qualitative inquiry added a cultural dimension on child maltreatment and informed to develop appropriate quantitative measures. Following 8 focus group discussions and 16 in-depth interviews as well as a pilot study of 299 adolescents in Vietnamese schools, a cross-sectional survey of 2,591 adolescents randomly selected from eight secondary and high schools in one urban district and one rural district was undertaken between 2004 and 2005. Data were collected by self-administered questionnaires in class rooms. Key information included demographics, family characteristics and environment, and four scales measuring sexual abuse, emotional and physical maltreatment and neglect as well as standard brief assessments of health related risk behaviours, mental and general physical health. The study clearly revealed that experiences of different forms and co-occurrence of child maltreatment among school adolescents were prevalent in Vietnam. The prevalence estimates of at least one type of physical and emotional maltreatment, neglect and sexual abuse were 47.5%, 39.5%, 29.3% and 19.7% respectively. A significant proportion of respondents (41.6%) was exposed to more than one form of child maltreatment, of which 14.5% and 6.3% experienced three or four maltreatment forms. Results from multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that the prevalence of child physical and emotional maltreatment and neglect among adolescents was not statistically different between urban and rural districts. However, children from rural schools were more likely to report unwanted sexual experiences than their counterparts in urban schools. There was no significant gender difference in reports of adverse sexual experiences. In contrast, girls were more likely to report emotional maltreatment and neglect whereas boys were more likely to experience physical maltreatment. Furthermore, family environment assessed by parental quarrelling, fighting, perceived quality of parental relationship and emotional support appeared to be the most consistent factors significantly predicting each form of child maltreatment. After controlling for a wide range of potential confounding factors, many significant correlates between each type of maltreatment, each level of maltreatment co-occurrence and each health risk behaviour were found. In general, the pattern of correlations between child maltreatment and health risk behaviours was similar for females and males. Emotional maltreatment significantly correlated with most behaviours examined. Physical maltreatment seems more likely to be associated with involvement in physical fights and being threatened. Sexual abuse was significantly related to smoking, drinking, being drunk, and involvement in fighting. Statistically significant associations between neglect and self-harm such as involvement in fighting, feeling sad and hopeless, suicidal thoughts and attempts were found. Clearly, co-occurrence of child maltreatment was significantly associated with almost all examined health risk behaviours and a dose-response relationship was observed in most of the dependent variables. Regarding continuous measures of mental and physical health, multivariate regression analyses revealed that presence of four types of child maltreatment explained a small but significant proportion of variance (from 5% to 9%), controlling for a wide range of background variables. Additionally, while each form of child maltreatment had independent effects on depression, anxiety problems, low self-esteem and poor physical health emotional maltreatment appeared to be the strongest influence on mental and physical health of both female and male adolescents. Analysis of variance also clearly suggested that exposure to increasing numbers of maltreatment forms significantly increased the risk of mental and physical health problems in a dose-response fashion. The present study extends a small body of previous research examining poly-victimization in developed nations to an Asian country. The data contribute new knowledge on cross-cultural child maltreatment problems. Considerable commonalities as well as some differences in the findings in Vietnam compared with earlier research were found. One important conclusion concerns the significant independent associations between various types of child maltreatment, as well as the cumulative effects of poly-victimization on a wide range of health risk behaviours, depression, anxiety, self-esteem, and general physical health. This pioneering research in Vietnam provides timely and substantial evidence that can be used to raise public awareness of the nature of child maltreatment and the harmful effects of not only sexual and physical abuse but also other forms of emotional maltreatment and neglect which have not received attention before. These results from a community-based sample have demonstrated the urgent need for prevention programs. The current study provides an impetus for more comprehensive research in this sensitive area in the near future so that culturally and politically relevant evidence-based responses to child maltreatment can be developed in Vietnam.

No description available.