Human Services News

From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:

In many cases, when abusive parents with multiple children target just one child for emotional or physical cruelty, authorities often remove the abused child from the home and return the non-abused siblings.

But brothers and sisters of abused children can suffer lifelong emotional scars from helping parents conceal the abuse or, in extreme cases, from being forced to participate in torturing their siblings, according to a study published in the current issue of the Journal of Emotional Abuse.

While psychologists have repeatedly studied the lifelong emotional carnage of untreated abuse victims, scant attention has been paid to their siblings, according to author Jane Hollingsworth, a licensed clinical psychologist and executive director of the Child Abuse Program at Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters.

"Those children require therapy, but don't get it."

The article, co-authored by Hollingsworth and Joanne Glass, a child abuse social worker, distills what these clinicians have learned handling hundreds of cases at the hospital's Child Abuse Program.

in dozens of cases throughout their careers, Hollingsworth and Glass have seen parents who focused all their abusive rage on one child, a "scapegoat," as they term it.

In one case, Francine (not her real name), a first-grader, was locked in a nine-square-foot closet for eight weeks.

In the vast majority of cases, brothers and sisters of the abused child are returned to the home without treatment.

In cases such as this, Francine would be treated, and John would be ignored.

While researchers have documented the chaotic lives of untreated abuse victims, the authors could find little research documenting how child abuse affected the lives of brothers and sisters of scapegoated children.

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