Innovative Workshops Tackle Child Abuse

The major problem with child abuse and neglect is overcoming the concept that children are the property of their parents. Dr. Hanita Zimrin, President of the Israel Association of Child Protection (E.L.I.), recalls that until 30 years ago this most disturbing of phenomena was completely ignored. That was when she wrote her doctoral dissertation on the subject for her Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's School of Social Work and found that almost no literature existed on the matter.

"There was and still is a belief in the developing world and also sometimes in developed countries," she explains, "that parents have the right to do whatever they want with their children and that the authorities should not interfere."

But even when governments and societies do acknowledge that child abuse and neglect exist and that the authorities can take action, it is not always obvious if and how professionals should proceed. Dr. Zimrin has given a series of workshops, under the auspices of MASHAV and MCTC, in Cyprus over the past year. The first of these workshops in November 1999, together with her colleague Dr. David Senesh, a leading child psychologist, taught local kindergarten and elementary school teachers how to identify and tackle the problem.

"We attempted to sensitize them to the problem," she recounts. "That involves teaching them how to identify an abused or neglected child, how to approach the child and what to do with the information they have."

"There are many obstacles surrounding this phenomenon and confronting the teacher," Dr. Zimrin adds. "The first set of obstacles are emotional. Child abuse is a taboo topic that touches all of us. Instinctively we do not want to get involved. Even though we are good parents none of us is perfect. Dealing with child abuse we need to confront our own behavior."

"Then there is a conflict of values," she continues. "Teachers are taught to value confidentiality and yet they may be required to report a child's secret or confessions to the authorities. Teachers are also taught to take non-judgmental approaches to different cultural forms of child rearing but in these instances they are required to be judgmental. Teachers learn to respect the values of other people and here they find themselves having to say that their values are better than others. And in addition there is the practical fear of teachers that violent parents may also behave violently towards them."

Child rearing techniques are also subject to cultural relativism. Is corporal punishment child abuse, asks Dr. Zimrin. In some cultures the answer is clearly no. But when does punishment become unacceptable? "It is a difficult question of severity," she feels.

Another problem identified by Dr. Zimrin is that all social groups deny the phenomenon by claiming it exists elsewhere - among other ethnic, class or religious groups. But she insists that child abuse transcends all barriers of race, creed and religion. "It exists everywhere," she says.

Hanita Zimrin and David Senesh gave two workshops over two days each - the first to kindergarten teachers and the second to elementary school teachers.

"Above and beyond defining the different types of abuse," says Dr. Zimrin, "and how teachers should act on what they find, in the workshops we try to let teachers experience how the children actually feel. We simulate a range of situations. For example, we ask the teachers to completely relax and then think of a secret that they have never told anybody. We do not actually ask them to reveal that secret but we do ask them to paint the secret in colors that symbolize their feelings."

"The aim of the game," she explains, "is to make the teachers really feel what it's like to have a secret that floods you with negative feelings. Feelings such as anger, confusion, fear and shame. Often that's the way a child will feel about his or her abusive parents. It's very important that the teachers understand the turmoil that the child is going through."

The workshops outlined the different types of abuse - physical, emotional and sexual as well as neglect. Even physical abuse, Dr. Zimrin stresses, the most blatant and ostensibly obvious problem, is not always easy to identify. The children and their parents will tend to say that bruises are a result of accidents rather than systematic violence.

"But it is easy to see through this deception if you know what you are looking for," says Dr. Zimrin. "One typical indication is that if marks are all over the body and of different colors then this would suggest that they are a result of more than one incident. If marks are symmetrical then they may have probably been inflicted by a beating rather than an accident."

Teachers are also taught to recognize other problematic behavior, such as a child who arrives early and is reluctant to go home.

Dr. Zimrin reports that in Cyprus the teachers exhibited an abundance of enthusiasm, and regretted that the workshops did not last longer. The November workshops were so successful that the Cypriot authorities arranged for an extra day's seminar given to government administrators in such fields as social welfare and law enforcement.

But the greatest complement was that Dr. Zimrin was invited back in June 2000 for an additional series of workshops.

"The most encouraging thing," she observes, "was to see how in a little more than six months so many of the ideas that we had taught last November had already been put into practice."

Dr. Zimrin's second visit to Cyprus focused firstly on the topic of organizational networking - how government ministries and non-government organizations (NGOs) can work together to overcome the problem, and secondly on the setting up of a telephone hotline for children in distress.

"On the subject of organizational networking," she recalls, "we dealt more broadly with domestic violence, including battered wives as well as child abuse. This is a problem in every sphere. Government ministries tend to resent NGOs, which are often alternative and watch-dog organizations critical of the government ministries. But it is vital that the government ministries, with their experience and organization, work together with the NGOs, and their flexibility and additional resources, if problems are to be effectively tackled."

On the topic of the telephone hotline, Dr. Zimrin met with a steering committee which will be responsible for setting up the service, and many of the professionals who will act as senior volunteers in operating the line.

"Firstly we discussed what type of line it should be," she explains. "Should it also be available for distressed parents, should it operate 24 hours a day, and should it be anonymous."

"The hotline we have in Israel is anonymous," she adds, "if that's what the children prefer. But we train volunteers in how to encourage the children to identify themselves."

Dr. Zimrin talked to the Cypriots about the ethical and legal aspects of anonymity. With today's technology it is possible to identify where any call has come from. But this is only done in extreme cases when the child refuses to identify him or herself and it is felt that the caller is at very serious risk.

"We did a lot of role playing and simulating phone calls," says Dr. Zimrin. "Volunteers have to know many things. How to cope with long silences, for example. How to stop people from hanging up. And we discussed what kind of follow up was for people who do identify themselves. In Israel we consider our hotline to be a gateway to all our therapeutic services."

Dr. Zimrin observes that different types of societies have different problems in the sphere of child abuse. In the developing world child labor and problems related to child prostitution and trade in young girls as well as drug abuse and the traditional problems of violence towards children still abound. But even in the developed world, child abuse is prevalent, with Germany and Britain having the highest rates of child abuse in Europe. At the same time, the US is one of the only countries in the world to refuse to sign the UN covenant condemning child abuse because it also declared the right of authorities to intervene where necessary.

"In the United States there is still the belief that human rights and legal procedures override all other considerations, including children's rights," she says, "and in Britain such rearing techniques as spare the road and spoil the child' are still prevalent. In middle and upper class societies the problem is that parents can easily intimidate social workers by say threatening to contact a lawyer."

Dr. Zimrin notes that educated parents may also practice more sophisticated emotional abuse instead of cruder and more easily detectable physical abuse. She also emphasizes that while men may be more aggressive and violent than women, nevertheless mothers in Israel are responsible for as much child abuse as men.

"The high rate of divorce in modern society," she regrets, "is also exacerbating child abuse. Often parents will use their children to emotionally blackmail each other at the expense of the child."

Child neglect, observes Dr. Zimrin, is even more difficult to define than child abuse. "Often the neglect does not come to light until an accumulation of neglect results in damage or a terrible disaster," she says. "If a teacher suspects neglect, he or she must report the matter to the authorities."

Generally speaking Dr. Zimrin feels that Israel is well placed to help other countries in both the developed and developing world, because it has accumulated much experience in combating child abuse amid a diverse range of populations.

"We have taken in immigrants from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas," she comments. "And incidentally refugees and immigrants generate their own form of child abuse. Often parents will take out the frustrations of being in a new country and culture on their children. The fact that their children are more easily able to adapt to their new culture and adopt language skills only intensifies their parents' cruel behavior."

In addition to returning to Cyprus in the near future to train volunteers for the telephone hotline, Dr. Zimrin hopes to be able to conduct more workshops elsewhere in the world in the near future.

"In Israel we have a lot of experience to share with our colleagues worldwide," she says. "For example our telephone hotline has been operating for more than 20 years."

Through her organization, E.L.I., and her workshops, she emphasizes that the bottom line is that societies must take a holistic approach towards the problem. Success in the treatment and prevention of child abuse and neglect is dependent upon careful coordination between many different players and their organizations, together with the work of highly skilled professionals and the use of innovative methods.

"We have only really just begun to acknowledge that the problem exists," she says. "Much remains to be done."