SELF-ARCHEOLOGY

Child Abuse in a Local Supermarket or  Children Are Human Beings I’m continuing my article series on awareness for mental health and child abuse, where I take a story or an example of child abuse, and talk about why this is harmful to the child and what effects it may have in the future. (My previous article When We Get Hurt for Being Hurt – How We Learn Not to Feel can be found here ; and my answers for Caring Witness about intervening, in a form of an article Being A Witness Of Child Abuse , can be found here .) Today I’d like to share with you another personal story about child abuse in public I’ve witnessed some time ago. I was reading parts of my journal and found this entry from last year. I think I’ve shared this somewhere on Facebook back then too, so I apologize if you have already read this. But hopefully this will be interesting for most of my readers. [Originally written on January 19, 2012; slightly edited] I was in a local supermarket, and not that far from me...

A couple of days ago Nash Yielding, who runs Caring Witness , asked me several questions about intervening in situations in which people are abusing children, since I have some experience intervening. I think these are very important questions to ask ourselves, even if we haven't intervened in such situations and have never thought about doing it. I've tried to answer Nash's questions honestly and at length. Afterward, I thought that it would be useful to post some of my answers as an article for other people to read. Nash agreed that it might increase awareness of the issue, as well as possible solutions. So, without further ado, here it is. (The questions are unedited.) 1) About how many times have you intervened in child abuse (whether directly or indirectly)? Five or six times, probably more. It depends on how we define "success," "abuse," and "intervention." (See the answer to Question #2). 2) Do you think the intervention(s) w...