The attorney and author Andrew Vachss has devoted his life to protecting children. I'm a lawyer with an unusual specialty. 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.