Understanding Abuse and Neglect
The facts on child abuse and neglect
What is child abuse?
Child abuse is when a child is hurt intentionally, or when a parent or caregiver fails to protect a child in their care. It is against the law.
There are different kinds of child abuse:
What is physical abuse?
Physical abuse is any deliberate physical force or action (usually by a parent or caregiver) that results, or could result, in injury to a child. It can include punching, slapping, beating, shaking, burning, biting or throwing a child. It's stronger than what's considered reasonable discipline.
What is sexual abuse?
Sexual abuse occurs when a child is used for the sexual gratification of an adult or an older child. Coercion (physical, psychological or emotional) is intrinsic to sexual abuse. This is what distinguishes it from consensual play with peers.
It's against the law for an adult or older child to:
- touch a child in a sexual way
- encourage or force a child to touch another person in a sexual way
- encourage or force a child to participate in any sexual activity
- tell a child to touch him or herself for an adult's or older child's sexual purposes
Sexual abuse of children can take many forms. Examples include sexual intercourse, exposing a child's private areas, indecent phone calls, fondling for sexual purposes, watching a child undress for sexual pleasure, allowing a child to look at, or perform in pornographic pictures or videos, or engage in prostitution.
What is emotional abuse?
Emotional abuse is a pattern of behaviour that attacks a child's emotional development and sense of self worth. It includes excessive, aggressive or unreasonable demands that place expectations on a child beyond his or her capacity.
Such acts include constantly criticizing, teasing, belittling, insulting, rejecting, ignoring, or isolating the child. This kind of abuse also includes failure by a parent or caregiver to provide their children with love, emotional support, and guidance.
What is neglect?
Neglect is the failure to meet a child's basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, sleep, medical attention, education, and protection from harm. This can occur when parents don't know about appropriate care for children, or when they're not able to plan ahead.
In addition, young children should never be left unattended. This includes leaving a child alone in a car even if you lock the doors and are gone for only a few minutes.
What is reasonable discipline?
The law presently allows parents to use "reasonable force" to discipline children. What's reasonable depends on the situation, but many forms of physical punishment that were acceptable in the past are no longer permitted, such as tying or locking children up.
Any form of physical discipline that requires medical attention, or results in bruising, welts or broken skin, is not considered reasonable discipline. Using belts, electrical cords or other objects to discipline a child can cause serious harm as well.
Physical discipline of babies is also unacceptable. Handling babies roughly — whether in anger or playfulness — is extremely dangerous.
Shaking can cause serious injury, including brain damage, blindness and even death. For more information, please see our publication entitled Crying Baby: Handle with Care.
Physical punishment can also lead to physical abuse when parents or caregivers lose control and strike their children in anger.
What are alternatives to physical discipline?
If you're frequently angry or frustrated by your child's behaviour, learning different ways to handle the situation can help you and your child.
The CAS, the public health department, and other community agencies can give you information about how to deal with your child's behaviour. In the parenting resources section of our website we provide information about positive discipline.
For more information, please see reporting abuse or neglect and how we respond to a report.