What is Abuse?
AAaCWorldwide defines and explains Abuse…

Abuse is a harmful act forced on a more vulnerable person by someone with more dominator power.
Abuse disrespects fundamental human rights, feelings, needs, basic mental and physical safety.
Abuse is a criminal act of violence that may take many forms: sexual, physical, verbal, emotional, spiritual.

The effects of abuse are long-lasting and destructive and leave a lifelong imprint of violence, especially when it is experienced in childhood.

Abuse in any form is damaging to a victim's mind/brain, body, their life!
No dictionary and no worldwide law provides a unified definition of abuse. AAaCWorldwide uses two major categories, mental and physical abuse, for the purposes of definition, while understanding that the mental and physical aspects of a human being are inextricably linked, one with the other: Mental abuse has physical repercussions and physical abuse has mental repercussions. They are inseparable parts of the whole person. Using these categories, we will explain and provide the commonly known or used terms and definitions of abuse. No judiciary or executive law worldwide defines abuse in the same way. To protect basic human rights, all countries in the world need to adopt a clear, comprehensive definition of the word abuse.

The lasting effects of mental and/or physical pain endured by children, definitely applies to all childhood victims and shows it effects in the later life of an adult.

Definition: Mental / Emotional / Psychological and Physical Abuse

Abuse can only end when:
- the autonomy of each individual is respected worldwide by individuals and governments.
- when individuals and governments accept the scientific findings concerning the destructive and long-lasting traumatic effect child abuse,
- when individuals and governments support by law and acknowledge the childhood abused adult as a mentally and physically harmed and traumatized individual who deserves healing. Otherwise the repetition of abuse will inevitably continue.

Child abuse is a crime and should be regarded as a crime beyond the age of 18.
Justice becomes an oxymoron when the law allows that a crime committed on a child ceases to exist as soon as the child reaches the age of legal adulthood.

As a first step, it is crucial that all Statutes of Limitation regarding child abuse be eliminated. Many of the devastating results of childhood trauma do not manifest until adulthood, possibly decades after the crimes were committed.
As long as any statute of limitation is enforced with regard to childhood abuse, society continues to condemn the victims of this horrible crime by saying that the criminal should not be responsible for the crime committed.

The public deserves education and awareness of the latest scientific findings concerning the long-lasting, destructive effects to health caused by child abuse and its damaging effects on society.

Support: to End the Genital Mutilation of Children Worldwide:
The Ashley Montagu Resolution
A Petition to the World Court, the Hague (1994)
http://www.montagunocircpetition.org/

Circumcision and Human Rights

Link between child abuse and schizophrenia proposed

By Megan Rauscher Reuters UK Fri Jun 16, 2006 4:36 PM BST
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2006-06-16T153640Z_01_HAR656158_RTRIDST_0_HEALTH-LINK-BETWEEN-PROPOSED-DC.XML

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - There is strong evidence to support the theory that child abuse can cause schizophrenia, two researchers argued at medical conferences in London and Madrid this week.
Paul Hammersley, of the University of Manchester, and Dr. John Read, from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, reviewed 40 studies of psychiatric patients and found that most of these individuals were sexually or physically abused as children or adults. In a review of 13 studies of schizophrenics, they found abuse rates from a low of 51 percent to a high of 97 percent. (A)