What Would you Do If Knew a Child Was Being Abused?

Statistically, children are more likely to be abused by people they know — aunts, uncles, step-parents etc, but even worse than that; they’re often abused by the very people who brought them into the world.

Parents are meant to look after their children, care for them and keep them safe. Yet, time and time again, these people do the exact opposite, and no one does a thing.

Recently, an eighteen-year-old girl in the UK went partying for six days, leaving her twenty-one-month-old baby girl alone at home. The baby caught influenza and was dead when her mother arrived back home, having starved to death through lack of care.

Why hadn’t the neighbours heard the baby cry? Especially as they lived in a block of flats?

Well, the baby didn’t cry. It was the eleventh time the baby had been left home alone, and through neglect, little baby Asiah had learnt that crying for what she wanted didn’t get her anywhere. Her needs would not be met, and no one would come when she cried.

But then I ask if they had heard her, would they have reported it? Or would they have turned up the sound on their televisions ? Put the crying down to a teething baby, made excuses for what was going on?

The Murder of Kitty Genovese

Kitty Genovese was returning home from work in the early hours of March 13th, 1964. A man approached her with a knife. Kitty ran towards her apartment building, but the man grabbed and stabbed her.

Hearing the noise, a neighbour, Robert Mozer, shouted out of the window for the man to leave Kitty alone.

The attacker fled, leaving Kitty to crawl to her building. However, when no one came to her aid, her attacker returned ten minutes later, stabbed her again, raped and mugged her.

She was found in the morning.

Thirty-seven witnesses did nothing.

Why?

Because they didn’t want to get involved, and someone else would deal with it.

The phenomenon (it has a name because it happens more times than we’d like to admit) was called the Genovese syndrome, but psychologists now know it as the bystander effect.

The Bystander Effect

The bystander effect or bystander apathy is a social psychology theory that seeks to explain why people fail to act when someone is in distress. It is theorised that it happens more often when there are other witnesses present, with individuals feeling a lack of responsibility as someone else can deal with the problem.

Of course, there are other reasons a person may fail to act — a fear for their own safety, a lack of confidence in their own testimony — are they overreacting? And, if someone feels helpless to do anything, they may feel too weak to act. Likewise, a lack of knowledge may mean they don’t know what to do, so they do nothing.

What if the Victim Were a Child?

If you saw a child clearly being abducted, would you step in to help?

Security specialist Bill Stanton, thinks not. After his experiment that saw a seven-year-old girl being abducted from a busy street in the middle of the day, Stanton says people are more likely to

• Cross the street

• Ignore the child’s pleas for help

• Walk past the kidnapper.

It wasn’t that people were uncaring. On the contrary, many people kept looking back, checking, but they chose not to get involved and believe someone else would step in and assume responsibility for the situation.

Why Did No One Act?

I wrote about an abused child some years back, and one of the most common negative feedback I received was, why did no one do anything? The signs were clearly there.

Yes, they were.

The little boy in question was a poster child for an abuse victim. He had dirty clothes that didn’t fit him, he’d steal food from other kids. He had outbursts and would cry for no apparent reason. On occasion, he was withdrawn and quiet, and sometimes there were bruises on his arms and legs.

He was emotionally, sexually and physically abused, and no one chose to do anything. Why?

Because his parents were good and kind people. They had friends in the community. His father was the local mechanic, and his mother had a circle of friends with children all in the same school.

There is no way those people in that boy’s life didn’t know, yet no one took action.

Why Did They Do Nothing?

People justify their ignorance. Oh, they see the signs, and deep down, they know, but they lie to themselves. They convince themselves it can’t be true. Can’t really be happening. They’d know for sure, right?

They wait. They’ll see what happens. See if it improves. Maybe they’re reading it wrong?

Excuse after excuse, and the child suffers.

We Know the Abusers

Ironically, one of those people who asked me often why no one did anything for that child sat back and did nothing when his own brother was abusing his wife and three children. The brother wasn’t hitting the family, but then not all violence is physical. He was mean and cruel, and the children were clearly afraid of him. They’d speak to no one, had no friends, kept themselves away from everyone. They were allowed to go to school, but they had to stay in their rooms after that. They did all the housework, did the cooking; we told they had to earn their keep.

And their father was vicious to them — emotionally abusive to the point those three children and the wife became reclusive.

At the time, I asked this friend, why don’t you do something? He told me his brother just needed help. “I keep trying to tell him, but he shouts me down and won’t listen.”

“Don’t you worry about the children?”

“Yes, of course, but what can I do? If I try to interfere, he’ll cut me out totally.”

“Report him to social services,” I said.

The look of the wide-eyed look of horror struck me. ‘But he’s my brother,” was my friend’s defence.

The only reprieve those children got was when their father died, but the damage was done by then. The children were teenagers, shadows of who they could be, and no one helped them.

People ask why no one helped the boy I wrote about. This is why. Because it was his parents and people didn’t want to interfere, people didn’t want to believe.

Why People Don’t Report Child Abuse

• They’re shocked by what they see.
• They doubt themselves and worry they’re overreacting.
• The justify it with, “It’s not my child, so it’s none of my business; I shouldn’t judge others.”
• Fear of not being able to remain anonymous.
• Someone else will report it.

The sad thing is. It’s the child who needs protection. Not you, not the abuser and it most certainly is your business.

There are three million child abuse cases every year, and five children die from it every day.

I know you can’t save all the children, but try to save one if you think they’re suffering.