CHILD EMOTIONAL ABUSE
Emotional abuse is a Parent or Caregiver's inappropriate verbal or symbolic acts toward a child and/or a pattern of failure over time to provide a child with adequate non-physical nurture and emotional availability.
30.9% of Australian children, reported to the Australian Child Maltreatment Study that they had experienced emotional abuse before the age of 18.
Emotional abuse, often also called psychological abuse, is the most notified form of abuse, and yet the least prosecuted. This is usually either because the emotional abuse accompanies another kind of abuse such as physical or sexual abuse, for which an abuser is prosecuted – or it’s because the most appropriate way of dealing with emotional abuse is usually through early intervention involving support, assistance and education for families.
Emotional abuse includes exposure to domestic violence for reporting purposes. In most jurisdictions this means that whenever police attend a domestic violence incident, if the children are present and awake, then police are mandated to make a child abuse notification and substantiation or confirmation is relatively easy given that the police have witnessed the abuse.