What is child abuse? Child abuse can be defined as any act or failure to act that endangers a child's physical or emotional health and development. There are four different kinds of child abuse: physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. Child abuse is a shocking event to think about, but what is even more shocking is how common it is. Numerous children are abused every single day and the scars that are left are often deep and extremely long lasting. Through this paper I am going to describe the different styles of child abuse.
             Physical abuse is a non-accidental physical injury that affects the child. There are many variations of physical abuse such as beating, punching, pushing, kicking, or burning a child. Physical abuse and corporal punishment can be differentiated by the fact that physical abuse purposefully inflicting mass amounts of bodily pain. There are many reasons why a child may be sexually abused; one of the most common ones might be the fact that the abuser was once the one being abused. The most common signs of physical abuse are unexplained burns, anti-social behavior, depression, or poor self-image.
             Another common form of child abuse is sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is what occurs when a child and an adult perform sexual acts (even if it is mutual between the two parties it is still considered abuse). Sexual abuse includes an abundance of offenses: fondling certain areas on a child, making the child fondle the adult's genitals, privacy violations (spying on the child while he is changing or going to the bathroom), exposition to pornographic articles, or child prostitution to name a few. A sexual abuser could be someone as close as a parent or a sibling or even as distant as a neighbor or a stranger. If a child has inappropriate interest in sexual acts, or he is experienced in seductiveness, it is probably true to say that there is some sexual abuse in the home.
             ...