Probing the mind of child abusers

The case of a Brookfield boy looks to be unusual because the alleged abuse seemed to have been deliberate, one counselor said.

WARREN — Jo Carol Shaw-Franklin has worked with abused children for 15 years, and says the case of an 8-year-old boy authorites allege was abused by his stepfather in Brookfield brought to her mind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.

The boy’s story of Damion C. Wise, 30, hitting him with a fist or baseball bat, keeping him away from his mother, sending him into the yard for hours, and threatening him with death shocked local residents — much the way the World Trade Center catastrophe shocked all Americans, Shaw-Franklin said.

The fact that terrorists would commit suicide to carry out the attacks left us stunned, she said. As Americans we only started to understand it, she continued, when we learned that in places where some of the terrorists live, committing suicide for a cause isn’t so uncommon, she said.

Likewise, when we heard about the Brookfield case, ordinary residents and child-abuse counselors alike wanted to know how someone could do such things, she said.

“The majority of people like to think there’s good in everybody, and when this happens, you wonder: ‘I don’t act that way. How could anybody ever?’” she said — adding that she is glad such an act shocks us.

“It shows we’re human. It’s really bad when we expect things to happen, and we just don’t react.”

She added: “Most of us are connected to our actions with our emotions. We start to wonder what happened to a person when they are not connected to their actions. Was it power and control?”

Shaw-Franklin, who works for Valley Counseling Services, was until recently its director of child and family services and has worked in the Trumbull County mental health field 35 years.

She said what has shocked people about this case is the alleged premeditated nature of abuse. Most child abuse involves a parent or caregiver who responds impulsively toward a child, sometimes as a result of stress, but this case is different.

The boy said Wise had beaten him for the two years Wise had been married to his mother. He said much of it occurred as punishment for failing to follow Wise’s rules or after the boy soiled in his clothes.

When the boy was interviewed by police last Saturday, he was wearing a soiled child’s diaper. Wise made him wear it, the boy said.

Wise also ordered the boy to go outside after breakfast while the adults cleaned the house and to stay there for much of the day, the boy said. Neighbors thought it was odd the boy was outside alone and nearly unmoving for so many hours the week before — but they assumed he was just lonely, not abused, they said.

Marcia Tiger, Trumbull County Children Services executive director, said she has heard from numerous people who have followed news coverage of the story and wish there was something they could do to help the boy.

She said the public can help by reporting child abuse and neglect when it occurs and becoming a foster parent.

“Both children are doing well,” Tiger said Friday, referring to the 8-year-old and his 5-month-old brother, who is also in children services care. The 8-year-old is in his foster home, she said.

Damion Wise was indicted Wednesday by a Trumbull County grand jury and pleaded innocent at arraignment Thursday to felonious assault and child endangering. He’s now serving one year in the county jail on a separate domestic violence conviction.

Edward Dyer, clinical director for the Community Solutions counseling center in Warren, said a person who acts in cruel and controlling ways over a child is usually unable to “give of himself.”

The only way for such a person to deal with a child is to impose control to avoid having to “accept the risks or generosity of being a parent.”

Dyer recommended an article by counselor Lynne Forrest on the “three faces of a victim,” which talks about individuals who suffer from emotional problems and sometimes commit child abuse because of receiving overt mental and/or physical abuse during their own childhood.

“As a result, they are often secretly seething inside from a shame based wrath that ends up running their lives,” Forrest wrote. Such people “repress deep-seated feelings of worthlessness; they hide their pain behind a facade of indignant wrath and uncaring detachment.”

They may also choose to “emulate their primary childhood abuser(s), preferring to identify with those they see as having power and strength, rather than become the ‘picked on loser’ at the bottom of life’s pile,” she wrote.

Such people adopt an attitude that says, “The world is hard and mean, only the ruthless survive.” They become perpetrators and protect themselves using authoritarian, controlling and punishing methods, Forrest maintained.

Shaw-Franklin said one of the things that have helped other communities coping with such an incident is for churches and other groups to have forums on child abuse so that members of the community can become more aware of the warning signs and know what to do if they spot something suspicious.

Tiger said the CSB has a speaker’s bureau and has educational materials that it can provide to such organizations if they wish to conduct such an event. The phone number at CSB is (330) 372-2010.

CHILD ABUSE

Statistics and information

The Trumbull County Children Services triage department received 2,553 new referrals in 2008, and assessed 1,631 referrals of child maltreatment such as abuse, neglect and dependency concerning 3,493 children.

The sexual abuse and investigation unit conducted 350 investigations of serious sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect and dependency allegations concerning 831 children.

The alternative response unit since July 10, 2008, assessed 125 referrals of child abuse and neglect concerning 280 children.

STATISTICS

A child is abused every 10 minutes in the state of Ohio.

Almost five children die every day as a result of child abuse.

More than three out of four are under the age of 4.

Between 60 and 85 percent of child fatalities due to maltreatment are not recorded as such on death certificates.

Ninety percent of child sexual abuse victims know the perpetrator in some way; 68 percent are abused by family members.

Child abuse occurs at every socio-economic level, across ethnic and cultural lines, within all religions and at all levels of education.

Thirty-one percent of women in prison in the United States were abused as children.

More than 60 percent of people in drug rehabilitation centers report being abused or neglected as a child.

About 30 percent of abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children.

The estimated annual cost resulting from child abuse and neglect in the United States for 2007 is $104 billion.

CHILD ABUSE DEFINED

Abuse: An act against a child that causes injury.

Types of abuse: Physical/emotional/sexual.

Neglect: Failure to act on a child’s behalf or to provide things such as adult supervision or protection, safe and clean housing, medical attention, education, food.

WHAT TO WATCH

Physical signs: Unexplained burns, cuts, bruises, or welts in the shape of an object, bite marks, anti-social behavior, problems in school, fear of adults.

Emotional signs: Apathy, depression, hostility or stress, lack of concentration, eating disorders.

Sexual signs: Inappropriate interest or knowledge of sexual acts, nightmares and bed wetting, drastic changes in appetite, overcompliance or excessive aggression, fear of a particular person or family member.

Signs of Neglect: Unsuitable clothing for weather, dirty or unbathed; extreme hunger, apparent lack of supervision.

Contact numbers

Each county has a children services board:

Columbiana County: (330) 424-7767

Mahoning County: (330) 941-8888

Trumbull County: (330) 372-2010

Sources: Akron Children’s Hospital Child Advocacy Center, childhelp.org, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services