Between the biological risk and the social risk: a case study

Abstract

Child abuse has been steadily gaining more attention and interest from the scientific community, as well as from the more literate segments of society, a circumstance that is not unrelated to the recognition of the highly recurrent and pernicious character of that phenomenon. This article deals with the theme of child abuse in a twofold manner: it presents a brief theoretical analysis of this phenomenon, and it discusses a real-life case of child abuse. The first part of the text is then devoted to a short historical review on the subject of child abuse, to the introduction of a possible definition of that phrase, to listing the variety of forms that child abuse can assume, and to a characterization of the short- and long-term impacts that situations of child abuse and neglect have upon central areas of human development. In a second part of the article a case study of child abuse is presented, highlighting the individual, family and socio-cultural factors that can bring about situations of child abuse in this case, as well as in others. The text concludes by recognizing the ambiguity, heterogeneity and complexity of this phenomenon, as well as the pressing need for prevention and correction mechanisms in the eradication of child abuse and in the struggle for the realization of these children's basic rights, namely their right to an enabling education and to a harmonious development.