Abstract
Children are easy victims. They are weak, frail, and extremely vulnerable. Under certain age, they are incapable of defending themselves, retaliating or even complaining and constitute, therefore, ideal targets for victimization. Victimization of children is as old as mankind itself. Infanticide was probably one of the earliest crimes. It is the ultimate victimization; the annihilation of a helpless, unaware and unsuspecting victim. This horrible, primitive crime has not yet disappeared and probably never will. It is still practised with relative frequency in some illiterate and underdeveloped communities though its incidence has sharply declined in modern, technological societies as a result of the widespread practices of abortion and birth control. Abortion renders infanticide unnecessary by making it possible for the mother to get rid of the baby before it is born. Though infanticide is probably the most serious crime to be committed against a child, it is but one single form of child victimization. Throughout history and until the present day children have been and are being subjected to a wide variety of abuses, neglect and maltreatments. Bakan (1971) reminds us that:
Children have been whipped, beaten, starved, drowned, smashed against walls and floors, held in ice water baths, exposed to extremes of outdoor temperatures, burned with hot irons and steam pipes.
This chapter is a reprint of an article published in the Revue Internationale de Droit Pénal, vol.50, nos 3 and 4, 1979.
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© 1989 Ezzat A. Fattah
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Fattah, E.A. (1989). The Child as Victim: Victimological Aspects of Child Abuse. In: Fattah, E.A. (eds) The Plight of Crime Victims in Modern Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20083-2_8
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