child abuse – Page 2 – Engaging Peace

Guantanamo may be the most well-known symbol of government-sponsored torture of prisoners, but the horrors of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib take place right in your back yard—conveniently hidden in high-walled prisons.

In today’s post we provide some of the facts about torture in the U.S. prison system, along with links to articles and videos that document the torture and its horrendous effects.

Facts

“The US incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, sometimes imposing very long sentences marred by racial disparities.” Human Rights Watch
Thousands of American prisoners are kept in solitary confinement, a state of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation, which is itself an extremely destructive form of torture.
Like the prisoners in Guantanamo, some prisoners are driven by desperation to stage hunger strikes to try to bring attention to their inhumane treatment.
A substantial number of the tortured prisoners, including the ones in solitary confinement, are youth under the age of 18.
Some of these children are girls
Their stories are heartbreaking—from child abuse by their families to child abuse in detention facilities.
Many of the prisoners are mentally ill. Instead of getting treatment, they get tortured. N.B. This video is very graphic and disturbing

Organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and Amnesty International work tirelessly to end torture, including in U.S. prisons. They deserve our thanks and support.

To learn more about torture in U.S. prisons, see Torture in Your Backyard, a powerful video from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

And read this report (opens in pdf) from the American Friends Service Committee.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

All of the major religious texts in the world today stress the inherent value of children, but to many people throughout the world—including the United States—children are disposable. They are beaten, raped, and murdered by family members, bullied to death by peers, and enslaved.

Brutality in families:

In the United States, according to government documents:

In 2009, 1,770 children died as a result of child maltreatment
In over 75% of these cases, a parent was the perpetrator
In 2010, 63,527 children were sexually abused

Bullying:

Probably every reader of this post either was bullied as a child or knows someone who was bullied. If so, it is likely you remember the incident(s) well.

Bullying is another symptom of a culture of violence, a culture in which brutalizing children has too long been ignored. To learn more about bullying in the U.S. today, view this graphic. Better yet, print it, send it around, and use it as a basis for discussion.

To humanize the problem more fully, see the reports on three recent cases in which children aged 10, 13, and 14 were bullied to death.

Slavery:

More people are slaves in the world today than at any previous time in history—and many of these slaves are children. Watch this video for more information.

What do you think are the effects on children of growing up in a culture of violence in which they can be exploited and brutalized? We will consider some of these effects in our next post.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Hell holes in the U.S.

Dehumanized children in America: Brutalized, bullied, and bought