I'm a lawyer with an unusual specialty. My clients are all children damaged, hurting children who have been sexually assaulted, physically abused, starved, ignored, abandoned and every other lousy thing one human can do to another. When you're in a business where a baby who dies early may be the luckiest child in the family, there's no easy answer. I think about it every day. My answer is that, of all the many forms of child abuse, emotional abuse may be the cruelest and longest-lasting of all.
Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another.
Emotional abuse can be as random as the fallout from a nuclear explosion. In matrimonial battles, for example, the children all too often become the battlefield. I remember a young boy, barely into his teens, absently rubbing the fresh scars on his wrists. His mother and father were locked in a bitter divorce battle, and each was demanding total loyalty and commitment from the child. Emotional abuse can be active.