Children suffering abuse readily accept greater abuse in adulthood.
That is the conclusion reached by abuse expert Heyward Bruce Ewart, III, Ph.D., university professor with 20 years of counseling and teaching experience.
"Child abuse mangles the personality, and sets up a false idea of self that attracts predators for a lifetime," he says.
A maltreated little girl, for example, will later pick out a mate who is no better than what she thinks she deserves. That relationship confirms what she has always thought: "There's something evil in me that caused me to be abused early and now. This is all I deserve."
Ewart says if she leaves that first bad relationship she will go to a worse one. And that's why shelters don't work, he asserts. Shelters offer haven but no insight into how one becomes a victim.
His new book, THE LIES THAT BIND: THE PERMANENCE OF CHILD ABUSE, is the first to establish a link between abuse as a child and further abuse as an adult, most often in domestic violence.
The book is in polished manuscript form and awaiting publication. In the meantime, he sells the book on his website for a nominal fee, either printed and bound or immediate email upload. His site is devoted to helping victims and survivors of abuse and violence, including the pandemics of school and workplace violence.
The author counts as major victims those falsely accused of child abuse--about 71 percent of the cases reported--and he consults these individuals in fighting what he calls a "no-win system."
Ewart also offers new tests for identifying predators, secret child abuse, dangerous employees, and dangerous students.
Dr. Ewart has devoted more than 24 years of his professional life to the protection and treatment of women, children, and the family. During the President Jimmy Carter Administration, he served the White House Conference on Families, and such leadership continues to this day.
He is not only a veteran clinician in the mental-health field but also a distinguished teacher at the university level. Through Zoe University, Jacksonville, Florida, his video lectures have been used by distance-learning students across the United States and in some 41 foreign countries.
A much sought-after public speaker, Dr. Ewart is a commanding presenter who speaks with great passion on the issues of abused women and children. He has hosted and appeared as a guest on many TV and radio programs in major markets, a love that dates back to his original career as a radio and TV news announcer.
He is a published poet, and his hobbies also include photography, singing, drama, evangelism, and social activities of all kinds.
His test for concealed child abuse is uploadable from his website. The intent, he explains, is to overcome threats and other fierce intimidation that typically prevent a child from revealing the truth about what he/she has suffered.
Such is accomplished by basing the first half of the test items on symptoms rather than reputed fact recalled from memory. The child is thus able, for the first half, to answer without fear. The symptoms are derived from the literature describing symptoms of abuse and emotional trauma, Ewart reports.
For a reason yet unknown, when children take the test, they tend to begin talking freely during the second half, when the questions are plain and obvious to the child. THIS TEST REQUIRES NO SCORING, BECAUSE THE CHILD WILL TALK TO YOU, he insists.
A second intent is to provide a means for interviewing the child directly, rather than through a third party. This approach, when objective, tends to hold up in court proceedings rather than subjective measures that call for an opinion of the expert witness. AGAIN, THE CHILD'S OWN WORDS ARE THE EVIDENCE, Ewart concludes.
