Value of minor trauma in the diagnosis of physical child abuse ‘The law of common man’

Abstract

Attached

According to the definition o f Meadow (1989), child abuse is defined as treating a child in an unacceptable way in a given culture at a given time. Major criteria for diagnosis o f physical child abuse include sever, multiple, and patterned injuries with different stages o f healing. Sometimes, even a single, minor injury may be sufficient to diagnose physical child abuse based on how much it is unacceptable to that particular culture at a given time. When single minor trauma is found, the criteria that could be used to decide whether it is unacceptable to the culture at a given time include; severe pain, severe disfiguration, negligence and lack o f care such as injuries to main members o f the body,unacceptable punishments such as biting, burning, pinching or tying to an object and,severe mental trauma such as due to non-sexual genital injuries. Much information can be gathered from minor injuries and their consequences such as how much o f care was rendered. A new criterion to diagnose physical child abuse is introduced using single minor injuries. However, there is no objective and defined way o f deciding how much the trauma is unacceptable for the culture at a given time. Therefore, this should be decided by law o f common man, that is, if the ill-treatment o f the child is unacceptable to a common man in the society