The programs and services of ESCAPE Family Resource Center have been designed to support parents throughout their child’s development. It is our hope that every child can grow up in a safe environment. We also recognize that sometimes that is not possible. Our educators provide classes, workshops and other programs to help families have healthy and ongoing conversations in every stage of their family’s life.
Focused on preventing child abuse, we want children to understand that abuse and neglect are never the fault of the child. Abusive adults rely on convincing a child to be silent about what is going on. Recognizing the signs and having an open, supportive conversation with the child can start the healing process.
Most often, children know the person who abuses them. The perpetrator can be a relative, family friend caregiver, or adult in a position of authority, though occasionally a stranger may victimize a child. Through the programs and services provided by ESCAPE Family Resource Center, families can learn what child abuse is and take steps to assure that children can lead happy, healthy lives.
Types of Child Abuse
The eight forms of child abuse are: bullet out name only – and click to the rest of the definition and the photos or other information.
1. Neglectful Supervision is placing a child in or failing to remove a child from a situation that a reasonable person realizes r3equired judgement or actions beyond the child’s level of maturity, physical condition, or mental abilities and that result in bodily injury or a substantial risk of immediat4e harm to the child.
2. Physical Abuse is physical injury that results in substantial harm to the child, regardless of whether the caretaker intended to hurt the child. The physical injury can result from punching, beating, shaking, kicking, biting, throwing, stabbing, hitting, burning, choking, or otherwise harming a child.
Texas Family Code allows for reasonable discipline by a parent, grandparent, a step-parent, or guardian who has the duty of control and reasonable discipline of a child.
3. Physical Neglect is failure to provide the child with food, clothing, or shelter necessary to sustain the child’s life or healthy. It does not include circumstances in which failure to provide these necessities is due to financial inability to do so, or crisis, unless relief services have been offered and refused.
4. Sexual Abuse is any situation in which a child is used for sexual gratification such as indecent exposure, fondling, rape, or commercial exploitation through prostitution or the production of pornographic materials.
5. Medical Abuse and Medical Neglect falls into two distinct categories.
• Medical Abuse is causing injury or illness to a child, usually in order to seek attention or other benefit(s); a fictitious disorder
• Medical Neglect is failure to seek, obtain, or follow through with medical care for a child, with the failure resulting in or presenting a substantial risk of health, disfigurement, or bodily injury; or with the failure resulting in an observable and material impairment to the growth, development, or functioning of the child
6. Emotional Abuse is any mental or emotional injury that results in impairment in a child’s growth, development, or psychological functioning. It includes extreme forms of punishment such as confining a child I a dark closet, habitual scapegoating, belittling, and rejecting treatment for a child.
7. Refusal to Accept Parental Responsibility is failure by the person responsible or a child’s care, custody, or welfare to permit the child to return to the child’s home without arranging for the necessary care for the child after the child has been absent from the home for any reason, including having been in residential placement or having run away.
8. Abandonment is leaving a child in a situation where the child would be exposed to a substantial risk of physical or mental harm, without arranging for necessary care for the child, and a demonstration of an intent not to return by a parent, guardian, or managing or possessory conservator of the child.
Please note that the Safe Haven or Baby Moses Law applies to infants less than 60 days old.