Domestic violence

The story of a ‘wicked rage claims a child’ is about an abusive husband and father Joel Steinberg who has been in seventeen years relationship with Hedda Nussbaum. The two adults had illegally adopted two children. The children and their foster mother were brutally defiled by their father who has been performing savage beatings which caused the death of one of their child. Later Joel Steinberg was caught and charged for murder.

The fact that Steinberg would execute merciless beatings to the wife and the children with the neighbors’ concern and the authorities was a sign that they would get support. However, Nussbaum would always pretend that everything is okay while in the real sense everything was at chaos. She couldn’t even cooperate with the authorities when they appeared to their home, and while she was at work, she would try hiding her bruises and giving false statements about her relationship thus protecting the husband.

Nussbaum and the two children seem to be helpless even to tell the truth due to either the husband’s threats or the use of Stockholm syndrome. I believe the charges to Nussbaum was inappropriate because as they continued to suffer from physical brutality, their mental health was also being damaged hence not being able to reason based on the understanding of physical and moral health. Most of the times the oppressed victim is always challenged in making eligible decisions for themselves since the oppressor at many times doesn’t stop the immoral behaviors at the time when the oppressed is at a stage where he or she is effortlessly controlled.

Violence against any individual especially in children and women is against the law. Nussbaum had a chance to go away from all the violations by sharing to anyone or reporting to the authorities. Many women fear to report to the authorities or to share with a friend or family member due to shame, that is fear of being identified as a battered woman or fear from the husband’s threats proclaimed on murder or harm from  or even fear that the husband might revenge for revealing about the immoral behaviors about the husband.

Child abuse causes emotional and physical distress. Prolonged child brutality on extreme cases can cause death like in the incident on the adopted daughter of Joel Steinberg. The impacts on child abuse affect not only the victims but also family and society respectively.

References

Gross, k. (1987). https://people.com/. [Online] PEOPLE.com. Available at: https://people.com/archive/a-wicked-rage-claims-a-child-vol-28-no-21/ [Accessed 9 Mar. 2019].