Seeds of tyranny.

• Author: Pinto, Anna
• Position: Child abuse

Abstract

This paper explores the societal underpinnings of child abuse and neglect. It looks at child abuse and neglect as systemic violence against children, and argues the importance of recognising its occurrence as the collateral damage of social strategy and not just individual happenstance. Thus, in order to address the problem of child abuse and neglect effectively, we need to understand the normative biases in its favour, its structural causes, dynamic schema, costs, fallout and payoff. In other words, we need to know why, how, in which ways and for whose benefit societies operate as though (and people seem to think) violence against children is ok--even necessary--and, so, perpetuated. The paper particularly focuses on the evidence of indigenous children.

INTRODUCTION

Today, when there is the least excuse of ignorance or of overall unavailability of resources and means, and there is a fairly universal standard of norms, (2) child abuse and neglect are still not decreasing. (3) Even in those societies where material needs are assured, child abuse and neglect are common, (4) certainly common enough to warrant the United Nations Secretary General's concern expressed in the initiation of a study of violence against children.

The phenomenon cuts across cultural, socio-economic and geo-political matrices, exhibiting only disturbing variations of form and manner--from the outright brutal and indeed pedaphobics to a more insidious and general attitude of discounting, an ubiquitous belittling of the condition of childhood. (6) The impacts of these are so ingrained in the social psyche that they are invisible, "normalised", even perceived as desirable. It is possible that a larger proportion of children are deliberately and avoidably abused or neglected today, both in large groups and as individuals, than ever before. (7)

The moral and ethical grounds of justification, the cultural rationalisations, the socio-economic excuses for permitting child abuse and neglect to go unchecked (8) are innumerable, more creative and certainly more intensive than the efforts to eradicate the phenomenon. (9) This inevitably draws us to the conclusion that while child abuse and neglect may be, in terms of specificities and individual targets, the outcome of chance, it is somehow integral to our social structures.

The seeds of tyranny and oppression must be sown early for the harvest to be bountiful. The exclusion of children from the purview of the fully human validates and assures the entrenchment and perpetuation of similar systemic exclusion and casual disregard of many discriminated-against and oppressed groups that characterises global societies today. The structures of our lives run on the assurance and threat of widespread repression--making us, common well-meaning people, the foremost and most efficient enforcers, as we are ourselves also the beneficiaries (of the status quo). (10)

"VIOLENCE AGAINST A CHILD" IS TO "VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN" AS "CIRCUMSTANTIAL" IS TO "REGULATED"

Systemic violence presupposes a powerful, strategised institutional procedure that defines the targets, methodologies, processes and mechanisms, sanctions, normative and legal frameworks, limits and penalties. It also, of course, signifies rationales and motivations, expectations of benefits that outweigh costs, the beneficiaries and the investors/invested and certainly, if not obviously, those who (by design or default) decide these matters.

Religious and moral literature of almost every institutionalised belief system presents a wealth of strictures and sanctions (in the sense of official permission) regarding violence against children, founded on a clear and explicitly articulated set of values. These Values could possibly be posited to have emerged from an experience or the archetypal memory of survival under threat, survival of the fittest, survival of the most compliant: the vital demand to adjust, qualify, prevail and survive--or die. Caring and competent educators in every situation and role are therefore mandated, rewarded and recommended by society to commit violence (moderated, controlled, measured and restricted, but still violence) for the good of the child, for the good of society. Most people are convinced of this: the decision makers, who must feel able to predict the outcomes and therefore the responses of their constituencies with some measure of certainty (and what is more certain than obedience under duress?); and those decided for and about, who usually respond with more confidence and enthusiasm to the prospect of predictability (however torturous) than the off-chance of surprising delight.

The power of learning though witness, rather than direct exposure, must have easily demonstrated its merit in terms of best use of scarce resources (11) in minimising attrition in the schooling (12) process. An additional incentive may have been the possibility of reducing investment in teachers and teaching processes in a society committed to exemplary pedagogical process. From indirect but witnessed abuse to anecdotal, mythological and reported abuse is a shorter step, and even more substantially reduces both attrition and direct outlay. The move from physical and corporeal aspects of violence, and the alterations in perceptions and definitions from culture to culture, situation to situation, indicate a more complex and sophisticated dynamic emergent in the phenomenon, until what we hope is its final and fullest flowering preceding extinction in the present.

THE BENEFICIARIES, THE EXEMPT AND THE TARGETS: (13) THOSE WHO GET HURT AND THOSE WHO DO NOT

From female foeticide and infanticide to child marriages, culminating in murder; and in terms of deprivation of food; denial of dignity; refusal of emotional security and intellectual or developmental opportunity; subjection to sexual and physical abuse and trafficking--sex (in terms of biological characteristics) is probably the broadest determinant of subjection to violence. Girls also probably suffer the most insistent and comprehensive, as well as the most intensive and diverse, forms of violence.

The children of communities facing ethnic and racial discrimination, particularly indigenous peoples and minorities, also experience a relatively higher incidence of violence. Displaced and refugee children; children in slums, on streets and the homeless; children of economically marginalised and less affluent...