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Child Abuse

This is a short clip from the TV show "Full House".  I remember myself living through a similar experience with a fellow classmate.  Child abuse can haunt a person their entire life unless they get help.  It is like a dark cloud that hovers over them and darkens even the brightest days.  If you see a possible child abuse situation, investigate and report it.

Reporting Child Abuse

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UNITED STATES

National Child Abuse Hotline - 1-800-4ACHILD (1-800-422-4453)

https://americanspcc.org/reporting-child-abuse/

 

Each state has a different hotline, so please go to:

https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/responding/reporting/

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SOUTH KOREA

129 or 1577-1391 (120 for translation services)

Effects of Child Abuse

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-improper brain development

-impaired cognitive (learning ability) and socio-emotional (social and emotional) skills

-lower language development

-blindness, cerebral palsy from head trauma

-higher risk for heart, lung and liver diseases, obesity, cancer, high blood pressure and high cholestoral

-anxiety

-smoking, alcoholism and drug abuse

*As taken from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childmaltreatment/consequences.html

Survivors of Child Abuse

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You can do it!  With help. ;)  Back in 2006, I had hit rock bottom.  A relationship of four years had ended, and I was experiencing the same anxiety attacks and desires to hole up and disappear that I sometimes experienced because of the childhood trauma I had survived.  Though, one day, I was walking around the University of Chicago's campus with my pastor at that time who said something that really got me motivated to take the healing from my past seriously.  He said, "Chris, how much would you pay to experience joy and freedom?  Isn't anything worth the investment to be able to enjoy life?"  And so, I started going to counseling (fervently this time).  When I started, one of the counselors asked me this:  "Healing from child abuse will be excruciatingly painful.  You will want to stop, but to truly heal, you must go through the wounds and nightmares.  Are you ready?"  I wasn't, but I was willing to go forward.  It took almost eight years of intense reflection, talking with a counselor, reading books, prayer and seeking God to finally come to the point where I can say that I don't have this dark cloud hovering over me.  I am free!  And just like Plato's character, I am trying to go back into the cave to tell the other prisoners about the world that is possible for them to.   Hopefully, they won't kill me in the process. ;)  So, I am leaving this here for whomever might find it encouraging.

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Organizations that Help Survivors:

Adult Survivors of Child Abuse (the manuals are in English, Spanish and Korean)

Torch Trinity Counseling Center (located in Seoul)

*Please contact me if you need any other help!  I might not personally be able to help you, but I can try to point you in the right direction.  Your healing starts when you are willing to face the past and do the work to overcome it (in my experience).  There is no easy way.  But isn't having an enjoyable life worth it?

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