Child abuse reconsidered the urgency of authentic prevention

The Special Issue on Prevention of Violence Ignores the Primordial Violence

“…A number of other leading scholars and clinicians have also concluded that reducing CP is essential to reducing physical abuse (Feshbach, 1980;Gelles & Straus, 1988;Haeuser, 1991;Maurer, 1976;Williams, 1983). Straus and Yodanis (1996) studied a nationally representative sample of American married and cohabiting couples.…”

Treatment of abusive parents: A reply to the special issue

“…Moreover, gains in one area should have a compensatory benefit to the other. This is why I was surprised and disappointed to find little mention in the Special Issue of recent advances regarding parent training efforts with abusive parents, despite a focus on treatment/prevention by two authors (Egan, 1983;Williams, 1983). Egan's report states that "treatment outcome studies have suffered from a lack of experimental design and rigor and a paucity of assessment procedures other than clinical ratings of change" (p. 293).…”

“…I would like to clarify that these treatment gains to which I refer are based on separate findings than those reported in the issue. As Williams (1983) stated in her article, ". .…”

The assessment of child abuse potential and the prevention of child abuse and neglect: A policy analysis

“…or families who perpetrate neglect or abuse (both physical and sexual) does not reduce the subsequent incidence of child maltreatment (Dixen & Jenkins, 1981;Garbarino, 1983;Polansky, Hally, & Polansky, 1975;Williams, 1983). Because of the repeated failures of traditional treatment approaches to deter future abusive behavior, many experts believe the best strategy for reducing or eliminating child abuse and neglect is to prevent it (Staulcup & Royer, 1983, Williams, 1983.…”