What springs to mind when we hear the words “child abuse”? Usually, and automatically, we think of persistent rape, monstrous acts of repeated undignified defiling behaviour towards children of a vulnerable age.

Yet we hardly think that there are more cases of child abuse than the ones I mentioned.

When a child learns that its mother tried to abort it but abandoned the idea at the last minute, that child will grow up wondering whether the mother loved him or her, or not.

When a family has an aggressive father, a mother intent on her career and the child is left to fend for him/herself most of the time, more often than not the mentality of the child is not stable and s/he will probably grow up with a brutalised heart, getting into one brawl after another if only to seek any sort of attention.

When a child grows “accustomed” to being bullied at school without anybody realising, that poor child will no doubt grow up to be mentally disturbed, his/her only source of “communication” with others will no doubt be by using nauseating language and getting into one fist-fight after another.

When a child at a young age already shows a certain tendency to be homosexual, while his macho father constantly tries to “design” him to his expectations, the child will one day definitely rebel with a cause because each and every one of us cannot force ourselves to be what we are not.

Another form of child abuse, which is despicable in the extreme, is showing favouritism towards one child, which drives a lance towards the other’s heart, with the parent totally unaware of what horrendous harm this does to a toddler or even an older person who, sadly, can never seem to get anything done right compared to his brother or sister.

These are cases of child abuse that never get to the law courts. The people who perform these villainous acts will never see the inside of prison walls and their offences will go unnoticed, yet even though the parents are certainly not perverts, their pestiferous behaviour towards their offspring permit the latter to grow up with psychological problems that no psycho-analysis can remedy.

There are more ways than physical child abuse to scar a child for life. I have only mentioned a few. Children are God’s masterpiece. Goading their characters like urging cattle is not.

Valerie Borg

Valletta