In January of this year, a Taipei County couple became angry at their grade-school-age mentally-challenged daughter for defecating and urinating in the house. Despite the cold, they locked her on the back patio for three nights. The child's heart and lungs failed, and she died.

In July, a babysitter and her roommate beat a four-year-old girl so severely for wetting the bed that they broke bones. Then while the child was sleeping they poured scalding hot water on her lower body, and allowed the wounds to fester. The child died of shock.

In August, in Ilan County, a single father surnamed Lin tied a long piece of cloth around his ten-year-old daughter's neck and used it like a dog leash to pull her outside.

Taiwan's birth rate continues to fall, with the average being 1.2 kids per woman. Common sense would say that the more scarce something is, the more precious--with fewer children around, shouldn't they be cherished even more? Why is it that such scenes keep recurring? Are they increasing in number?

When parents encounter relationship, health, or economic problems, children are at higher risk for abuse. Social workers and government agencies can alleviate the danger.

Poor victim, vile abuser?

Searching for a reason, some say that consciousness of child protection has become deeply ingrained in society, and more people are reporting abuse. Others place the blame on changes in the social fabric. They say the family unit has become dysfunctional, causing an increase in physical, mental, and sexual abuse, as well as neglect and abandonment, and misuse of parental authority.

According to statistics from the Ministry of the Interior's Children's Bureau, child and teen protection cases are on the increase. In 2000, there were 6,059. In 2003, the figure reached 8,013, and last year it fell slightly to 7,837.

It's not just the numbers that are increasing, but also the severity of the cases. According to statistics from the Child Welfare League Foundation, between January of 2004 and January of 2005, the media covered the deaths of 56 children or teens who died at their parents' hands of abuse or murder-suicides--that averages to more than one young life a week snuffed out by the adults closest to them. The portrayals in the news always feature the "poor, weak abuse victim" and the "unconscionable abuser." Filled with rage, people ask, "Why?" Professor Yu Han-yi of the Department of Social Work at National Taiwan University (NTU) says that the sensationalized, simplistic finger-pointing presents a distorted representation of the complex underlying reasons for child abuse and the social problems related to it.

A 2004 Children's Bureau survey of abusers showed that the most common reason given was a lack of education in parenting, with 2,994 people (34%) giving that answer. That was followed by marital problems with 1,819 responses, drug and alcohol problems with 1,125, poverty with 796, and unemployment with 709.

Hsu Shui-fung, director of the Taipei Child Welfare Center, says that the majority of parents sentenced to the center's mandatory parental education programs are low-income or unemployed or single parents. Seventy percent of them are disadvantaged in some way.

"Actually, they are a group of parents who aren't getting any help," Hsu says, with a note of sympathy to her voice. In Taipei City, 20% of abuse cases from 2003 involved mentally handicapped, hyperactive, or otherwise "special" children. When parents raising children with special needs lose their jobs or run into relationship problems and lose control, the risk of violence rises.

Who keeps children from returning to their homes? Who lets them to wander the streets? Child protection is the responsibility of families, and of society.

No bad intentions

In actuality, the horrible child abuse cases that make the news and cause the angry finger-pointing are in the minority. Most incidents elicit understanding and even sympathy.

"You are all still young. You don't know anything about how frustrating and hard it is to raise kids." Those are the words Hsiao Ming's mother had for young, unmarried social workers during an interview at a center for the prevention of domestic violence and abuse.

Hsiao Ming's parents work in Taipei. They left Hsiao Ming in the south of Taiwan to be raised by his grandparents, and didn't take him up to Taipei to live with them until he was in elementary school.

Hsiao Ming's mother never got along with her mother-in-law, and after Hsiao Ming came up to Taipei, there were even more problems. He wouldn't listen to his mother and he'd lie. He wouldn't do his homework, and he'd change things in his parent-teacher communication book. From time to time, he'd also complain about this mother to his grandparents, and they'd criticize her together. The tension with the grandmother and the stress from her day job as a secretary got to be too much for the mother, and she often couldn't help but to "teach Hsiao Ming a lesson."

One hot summer day, Hsiao Ming's teacher found him wearing a long-sleeved shirt to school. He investigated, and found that Hsiao Ming's torso was covered with marks old and new. The teacher notified the abuse prevention center, which sent social workers to the school right away to check on the situation. They then took Hsiao Ming away for his safety.

When the mother got word that he'd been taken away, she exploded in rage. She told the social workers, "I was beaten since I was small, too! If you don't beat a kid, he'll never amount to anything!"

After Hsiao Ming was placed in a foster home, the experienced foster mother noticed his restlessness and inability to focus. Social workers took him for testing, and he was identified as having attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

That led his mother to a great realization--he didn't mean to be bad, or to act that way on purpose, and her method of corporal punishment could have no effect. She then began to attend Hsiao Ming's early intervention therapy classes. She also became determined to learn how parents should interact with their children and how to keep conflicts to a minimum.

After six months of communication and therapy, the mother's attitudes toward parenting changed, and with that, her relationship with her son made a change for the better. Hsiao Ming returned to his parents' home.

Violence, abandonment, and sexual abuse strip children of their carefree childhoods.

Hsiao Ju's story

Two years ago, a single father was taken in to a police station for stealing a mobile phone. The police noticed the five-year-old girl with him, who had a shaved head, and was covered in scars. They contacted the abuse prevention center.

Social workers had Hsiao Ju's father examined, and discovered that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. The mother had been unable to cope and had had to give up custody of Hsiao Ju in exchange for the father's consent to divorce.

After Hsiao Ju was placed with a foster home, her father repeatedly made harassing phone calls to social workers, saying if they didn't return his daughter to him he would throw sulfuric acid on them for revenge. After some time, the father finally realized that if he wanted to get his daughter back, he would have to cooperate. Then, his attitude changed. He agreed to undergo therapy, and vowed to have his daughter back in one year.

While Hsiao Ju was in foster care, she didn't want to see her father. But when she did see him, she was very warm to him, hugging and kissing him. The social workers were shocked. They asked her privately why she acted this way, and she answered: "I'm afraid daddy will know I don't love him!"

As the father was doing well, social workers had no grounds to keep Hsiao Ju in foster care. After one year, she finally was returned to her father. Social workers feared he might still psychologically abuse her, but with Hsiao Ju now in elementary school and her re-married mother coming once a week to see her, they thought the danger should be much less.

Having slipped through the cracks, Hsiao Ju naturally developed her own methods of manipulating adults. For example, "psychosomatic" illnesses would periodically strike. During class her stomach would hurt or she'd feel nauseated, but as soon as her mother came to pick her up she'd be fine. Though her hair had grown back and her bruises had faded, Hsiao Ju's psychological scars remained.

A woman who was often beaten by her husband takes her two children to the police station and applies for a restraining order to start a new life free of fear.

Abuse and poverty

According to a Children's Bureau analysis, most cases of child abuse are in the form of physical abuse (25.84%), followed by abandonment (23.38%), and inappropriate discipline (21.29%). In 82.9% of the cases, the abusers were the biological parents.

"How could parents abuse their own children? Even an animal wouldn't do that!" That's the common question in people's minds.

Professor Yu Han-yi says that finding faults in the individual abuser's character and placing blame is less positive and useful than using "environmental variables" to analyze the problem.

Yu research looks at a child abuse case from a different perspective. According to her studies, reported cases of child abuse in a county or city is directly proportional to that county or city's poverty and unemployment rates. For example Taiwan's poorest areas, Taitung County and Ilan County, are also first and second in numbers of child protection cases.

Getting to the roots

To prevent further harm to children, parents, and society from child abuse, many sociologists have turned their thoughts to how to get to the root of the problem and stop it before it starts.

Last year, the Children's Bureau had Joyce Feng of NTU's Department of Social Work put together an evaluation index for high-risk families.

"High-risk" refers specifically to households with problems such as economic difficulties, physical or mental health issues, or a lack of stability in family or marital relationships.

With the current social conditions in Taiwan, the number of high-risk households is rising rapidly. Last year the number of unemployed rose to 457,000, of whom nearly 240,000 were aged between 25 and 45--typically with both parents and children to care for. In 2003 more than 100,000 people were hospitalized for drug and alcohol dependency problems or depression--double the number from four years ago. The divorce rate is at a high, with 2.87 married couples splitting up per 1000 people, and that also heightens domestic tensions and increases the danger of abuse.

Li Hung-wen, head of research and development for the Child Welfare League Foundation, points out that people are more likely to collapse under pressure when they are lonely. That means that in times of family crisis, people who lack support systems are more prone to commit extreme actions like child abuse, domestic violence, and even murder-suicides.

From January of this year, the Child Welfare League has been running "High-Risk Family Preventive Services" in ten cities and counties, including Keelung, Taipei, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Kaohsiung, and Pingtung, at the behest of the Children's Bureau.

Lessening the danger

The aim of the High-Risk Family Preventive Services is to assist kids in getting out of potentially violent situations. Social workers observe families, conduct telephone interviews, and refer services in order to help families become more functional. That reduces the danger for children and helps prevent child abuse and domestic violence.

Chang Kai-hua heads up the family services department of the Child Welfare League's service center for southern Taiwan. She says that of the 170 cases the center has taken on since the end of last year, one out of six remains unresolved due to people involved dropping out of contact, putting up resistance, or similar reasons.

Lack of resources is another problem. There are all sorts of family problems, but some counties and cities do not have the resources to assist, and when a situation occurs, they lack agencies to place children in foster homes. That makes this sort of service difficult to come by. Chang says that in more than half the cases, mental illness or drug or alcohol addiction are a factor, and most of the afflicted have no sense that they have a problem. With no way to force them to seek medical assistance or to quit using, social workers feel powerless.

Though they face these challenges, each time they are able to help a marginalized child out of danger, social workers feel their drive replenished.

A single mother of a five-year-old boy was unable to make a living, so she planned to kill herself and her child. Social workers provided her with career placement information, helped her to apply for low-income status and emergency assistance funds, and even found low-cost childcare for the boy. With this help, the mother's self-confidence was renewed, and she found the courage to face life anew.

A father with a history of failed marriages went bankrupt and his live-in girlfriend left, taking two of his six children with her. In his desperation, he attempted to commit suicide by inhaling carbon monoxide. Social workers paid intensive visits to the man's home and sent a psychiatrist to examine him, but he showed no improvement. Then, in a recent visit, social workers discovered that he intended to gas himself and the four children who were still with him. He was then forcibly put into treatment and the children were placed in foster care.

Abused children express their inner turmoil through art therapy.

Finding a home

While child protection services have now begun to place greater emphasis on recognizing and eliminating potential dangers, they still have more work than they can deal with when it comes to providing support and rehabilitation when incidents do occur. Yet the quality of such subsequent work has far-reaching effects on children's futures.

In Taiwan, child abuse reports are handled within the domestic violence prevention system. When one of the 113 women and children's protection hotlines around the nation receives a report, it immediately turns it over to the local domestic violence prevention center. Social workers at the centers are required to follow up with an investigation and placement within 24 hours.

In most cases it is preferable to allow other family members to take care of the abused child, as firstly they are blood relations and not strangers to the child, and secondly they are more likely to be of similar backgrounds so the child will have fewer problems adjusting.

In cases where a suitable relative cannot be found to take in the abused child, the second choice for placement is a foster home or institution. Available resources vary by city and county. Yu Han-yi says that in some localities, the domestic violence prevention centers keep in close contact with foster homes and tend to place children in them, while in others children tend to be placed in orphanages or nursing homes.

Children don't need much more than loving arms to hold them and give them a safe environment in which to grow.

Wandering souls

However, there are difficulties in placing children in foster homes and institutions alike. With foster homes, for example, the foster parents are often unable to deal with the placed child's out-of-line behavior and send him or her back as a "problem child." The child is then bounced from foster home to foster home--a traumatic experience. Institutions, on the other hand, lack the warmth of a home, and there's often the problem of the big kids in the system picking on the little kids.

In fact, abused children are not always willing to leave their homes. Yu Han-yi says that abused children don't blame their abusers but rather think it's their own fault for being ill behaved. While rushing children off from their homes, social workers often don't properly explain what's going on or offer the children comfort. Because of this, many children have feelings of confusion, self-blame, and anger that persists after the physical scars have healed.

Childhood psychological trauma left untreated can have lifelong effects, and can even affect the next generation. Yu Han-yi says that American studies have shown that a high percentage of abused children later become abusive parents themselves.

One 30-something mother was shocked to realize that the way she treated her children resembled more and more how her own mother, whom she hated, once treated her--the name-calling, the shaming in public, the beating. She immediately sought psychological and hypnotism therapy, hoping to escape the shadow of her mother.

Floating

Even worse than the psychological trauma for abused children is the fact that after being taken from their homes, there is a good possibility they won't ever be able to go back, and that they'll remain floating in the system.

When a child is placed into a foster home, attention is placed on protecting the child and not on improving the original home. "Temporary" then often becomes "permanent," and the child who can't go home can only bounce between foster homes, becoming all the more traumatized. Because of this phenomenon, the "Family Ties" program was introduced in the 1970s in America to rehabilitate households and prepare them for the eventual return of the abused child.

In Taiwan, there have been similar problems in handling child abuse cases.

For examples, one may look at the Taipei County Child Protection Resource Center. There are 83 children who have been placed there for more than four years, six of whom have been there for more than seven years. One was placed there while in his third year of elementary school, and only left this year after entering college.

The incompleteness of the work has become the main thing keeping kids placed in foster care from returning home. The organizations involved only take the kids away and place them in foster homes. They haven't taken steps to assist and rehabilitate the abuser and the family.

As rebuilding the home environment is no easy task, abused children end up in foster homes until they enter adulthood, which counters the very purpose of foster care. Yu Han-yi believes that this is not right. She says that children need a stable environment to grow up in, and that moving around constantly has a lasting effect on them. Therefore, she says, positive efforts should be made to rehabilitate homes that have the potential to be "saved." If it is determined that there is no such potential and that a child will not be going back, then long-term plans for an adoptive home should be made as soon as possible.

Child abuse--a social problem

Yu Han-yi stresses that bringing the law into homes is not ultimately done in order to "punish" the abuser but to protect children and also to give the family and the abuser a chance to recover.

"Child protection is not a particular family's problem, it's the whole of society's problem," Yu says. Each child abuse case is a warning, telling us that society is not providing enough support to families. If the public authorities come into the home without providing the needed resources and services, only to take the children away forcibly as "punishment," then society, the family, and the children all lose.

Hopefully, Nuan-nuan's birthday wish will come true for all children, and they'll all be able to grow up free of fear and violence.