There are 4 types of child abuse:
- Physical
- Sexual
- Neglect
- Emotional/Psychological
Physical abuse:
- Any type of physical harm
- Shaking, throwing, hitting, biting, pinching
- Poisoning
- Choke-holds, punching, pulling hair, pushing
- Non-consensual tickling
- Burning or scalding or freezing
- Suffocating or holding underwater
- Typing or forcing the child into a stressed position
- Withholding sleep, food, water, medication
Sexual abuse:
- Assault by penetration; sodomy, rape, objects
- Non-penetrative sexual acts; touching outside of clothes, rubbing, kissing, masturbating
- Watching pornography (including pictures) or watching sexual acts in real life
- Telling dirty jokes or stories about sexual things in nature (like their own personal sexual history or their sexual fantasies).
- Forcing a child to undress for sexual gratification or power
- Flashing a child or showing your genitals
- Teaching and encouraging a child to behave in a sexually inappropriate way
- Grooming for future abuse or activity
Neglect:
- Not providing basic needs of a child; food, clothing, shelter and medical care.
- Keeping a child separate from the rest of the family
- Placing a child in a situation where they might experience emotional and physical danger
- Leaving a child alone when they are too young or alone for a long enough time that they experience harmful effects
Emotional and Psychological Abuse:
- Name calling
- Ridiculing
- Mocking
- Trying to make the child feel stupid or inadequate
- Shouting
- Gaslighting (trying to make the child think they are crazy)
- Not allowing the child to talk or participate with them or others
- Cussing at the child
- Giving the child the silent treatment
- Refusing affection or physical contact
- Preventing normal interaction with peers or others
- Ill-treating another person via abuse, name calling, ridicule, racist comments
- Bullying
- Emotional Blackmail
- Threatening
- Telling a child they will kill themselves. Sometimes they threaten to kill themselves if the child tells on them
- Telling the child that if they tell on them then they will go to prison and never see the child again
- Threatening suicide in front of a child
- Threatening to kill the child or the child’s other family members
- Showing horror movies or other inappropriate scary movies to terrify child or create fear within the child
- Trying to terrify the child
- Terrifying child with possible natural disaster events
- Terrifying child with possible life threatening events
- Terrifying child with guns and the threat of using the gun (or knives)
- Threatening the safety and/or life of the child’s other parent, disparaging the child’s other parent, scaring child that other parent is dead or will be dead
- Not allowing the child to speak with the other parent when the child is scared
- Withholding love, care or concern from the child