A Study of Investigating Child Abuse

Abstract

Child abuse can take many forms. Such forms can include physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, neglect, and maltreatment. The child will almost always be questioned about the abuse. The way in which the police officers and the criminal justice system go about their investigation can affect the child. There are certain ways in which to question a child about violence in the home. A cold hard fact of child abuse is that in 1999, child protective services agencies received reports on about 1.97 million allegedly maltreated children. (Gosselin, 2005) For this reason alone, one would want to research more on how to stop, prevent, and catch child abuse before it becomes even worse. This study involves interviews with Child Protection Agency members and their thoughts on how to improve the investigations of child abuse.