Around 11,000 babies are born daily in the United States. Each and every one of them is at risk of child abuse. Lest you think that your child will not be one of them, remember that child abuse also happens outside the protective shelter of your home. It can happen in schools, in malls, in day care centers, in offices, and even in a venue as sacred as a church itself.

Child Abuse Defined

To make any allegations of child abuse stick, the age of the abused must be firmly established to be less than 18 years. Usually, the age is usually determined at the time of the commission of the crime, even if the abused is of age at the time of trial. If your hidden spy cams have dates features, then you can better establish date of commission of the crime and the exact age of the child.

That being said, child abuse is the commission of physical, sexual, and psychological maltreatment of a child by an adult. It is also the omission of acts to look after the welfare of a child. In both cases, the child is exposed to actual and possible physical and emotional harm.

Perpetrators (or Perverts)

Generally speaking, parents, nannies and babysitters, teachers, and anybody living and working around or with children can be child abusers. This is not to say that you must adopt a suspicious attitude towards everybody living and working around your child.

It is thus advisable to position hidden spy cams in areas where possible and suspected child abuse can happen in the home - the child's bedroom, general living areas, and kitchen. Ask your lawyer for legal privacy issues first.

You can adopt a proactive approach to your child's protection in places outside the home, especially in school. You can inquire from the school administrator regarding the presence of hidden spy cams in strategic places. Often, the presence of spy cams deters malicious intent.

You have to ask, however, if these hidden spy cams do not intrude upon your child's privacy. Admittedly, balancing child protection and respect for child privacy can be a hard act, but the benefits will be well worth it.

Negative Effects

Victims of child abuse can emerge from the horrible experience either as better persons or as bitter individuals, depending on the help you can give them and their resilience.

Unless you talk to the victims themselves, you cannot differentiate victims from non-victims simply because most of them do not exhibit outward behavioral signs. Small children simply do not have the language capacity to fully describe their experiences, while older children can be very reluctant about discussing them. This makes the installation of hidden spy cams more than necessary around your children.

Thus, the negative effects are usually emotional and psychological in nature. Usually, victims are prone to anxiety, depression, limbic irritability, and dissociation. Indeed, physical scars can be surgically removed and can fade, but emotional scars can be harder to detect and to treat.

Prevention Strategies

Aside from installing hidden spy cams to monitor your child, especially in the home, you can take many approaches to preventing child abuse. You can actively participate in community programs that seek child abuse prevention, ask your school to implement a skills-based curriculum that will educate your children about child abuse and how they can avoid it, and allow yourself and your nannies a break from stress.

Indeed, child abuse is a horrible crime upon humanity. It takes each and every one of us to pour our talents and our souls into protecting the future of our species.