Family Violence
In his book Wounded Innocents, writer Richard Wexler recounts the testimony of eight-year-old Mary Ellen Wilson in the first U.S. court case concerning child abuse. The year was 1874:
Mama has been in the habit of whipping and beating me almost every day. She used to whip me with a twisted whip, a raw hide. The whip always left a black and blue mark on my body. I have now the black and blue marks on my head which were made by mama, and also a cut on the left side of my forehead which was made by a pair of scissors. She struck me with the scissors and cut me . . . I do not know for what I was whipped—mama never said anything to me when she whipped me.
Interestingly, this case was brought before the court by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). Although there had been laws enacted as early as colonial times to prevent child abuse, in practice the legal system had mostly ignored the issue. In Mary Ellen's case, the ASPCA successfully argued that the girl was protected under laws barring the mistreatment of animals.
As a result of the publicity surrounding Mary Ellen's case, more than two hundred Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children sprang up around the country, and many states passed laws making child abuse illegal. However, public awareness of the problem wavered over the next eighty years, and child abuse remained a largely unacknowledged fact of life in America. Most communities continued to expect the family itself to deal with the issue; if anyone did intercede on the behalf of the victim, it was likely to be an extended family member or a pastor, and the problem was unlikely to be reported. Children were rarely removed from any but the poorest families.
Historically, authorities got involved only when violence resulted in severe physical injury or death. The passage of the first mandatory child abuse reporting laws at the state level in the early 1960s began...
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