CHILD PHYSICAL ABUSE
Injuries can be unexplained due to a number of reasons:
- location on the body
- how often they occur
- shape or type of injury
- severity of injury in circumstances
One of the indicators of physical abuse is unexplained injuries. What do we mean by that?
If you’re a Parent or Carer of children – especially boys – you will know that they are often coming in with bruises, scratches, cuts and grazes that they can’t explain and they don’t seem to really even care about!
There are also some legitimate medical conditions that can present as signs of physical abuse which we will mention. So whilst you need to be sensible with this indicator, we still recommend reporting anything suspicious and leaving it for the experts to investigate and determine whether or not it’s abuse.
CASE: A 10 year old boy living with a single Father came to school covered from head to toe in severe bruising. He denied being beaten but that’s not uncommon for victims, so Police needed to investigate. They removed him from school and took him to the hospital for a medical examination only to find that he had a medical condition that was causing the bruising. There were even bruises inside his mouth. So on that occasion Police didn’t find any abuse – but Dad was certainly happy that Police ascertained the cause of the bruising because he had been thinking his son was clumsy or being beaten at school!
When we’re talking about unexplained injuries, they can be unexplained due to a number of reasons - where they are on the body, or how often they occur, or the type of injury they are and the severity of the injury.