The Problem: Child Abuse In Minnesota

In the year 2005, more than 8,000 Minnesotan children were abused physically, sexually, emotionally, or by neglect. Of those, 48 children suffered life-threatening injuries and 19 children died from maltreatment. Many children are victims of multiple forms of abuse.

Forms of abuse include:

• Physical Abuse
• Torture
• Sexual Molestation
• Verbal Abuse
• Rejection
• Denying emotional responsiveness
• Neglect
• Malnourishment
• Terrorizing
• Degradation
• Humiliation
• Isolation
• Exploitation
• Corruption

The Consequences

For most children, the trauma is immediate, for others the destruction of the childhood innocence is a slow ongoing process, but for all, abuse creates pain that can last a lifetime. All children experience a sense of betrayal, which makes it difficult for them to trust, to love and to form good relationships with adults. Children often see themselves as “damaged goods,” forever stigmatized by the abuse. Children feel a lot of shame and guilt. They often are unable to see that they were powerless to stop the abuse and instead blame themselves.

The consequences of this abuse may include:

• Inability to be honest or self expressive.
• Severely damaged personal and physical self-esteem.
• Vulnerability to involvement in criminal & deceitful activity.
• Fear of any kind of touch.
• Depression. withdrawal & suicide.
• Distrust toward adults & caregivers.
• A tendency toward fearfulness and hyper-vigilance.
• Substance abuse.
• Symbolically violent acting out.
• A fear of going home.
• A tendency toward dangerous behavior.
• Poor appetite.
• Limited emotional responses.
• Sexualized behaviors.
• Bed-wetting.
• Failure to thrive.
• Behavior extremes from passive to aggressive.
• Speech disorders.
• Acting significantly older or younger than age.

Thankfully, there are many organizations whose purpose is to help address the needs of children and families who have are being affected by abuse. With limited resources to face an enormous challenge, these organizations need all the help they can get in achieving their goals.

How We Help: The Healing Power of Art

All children have the right to have safe and trusting relationships with caring adults.

Drawing from the wisdom and methodologies of Art Therapy, Free Arts volunteer mentors provide children with an empowering creative environment that helps them express their innermost feelings, develop skills and personal assets, and have healthy positive relationships with adults.

Free Arts Minnesota partners with a variety of non-profit social services and community empowerment organizations, whose objectives include helping children and families with the consequences of abuse.

Our programs include projects that:

• Provide children with a safe outlet for expressing regressive impulses, anger, and other difficult feelings.
• Asset development: We help children develop creative competence and latent talents in a wide variety of media, such as: visual arts, dance, theater, creative writing and music.
• Develop a sense of self-confidence in decision-making.
• Provide a sense of the value of their personal efforts through positive feedback and the experience of success.
• Help families with limited success in having positive relations, engage in fun and engaging creative activities.

Art Therapy research and practice has evolved a well-developed understanding of how the Arts benefit children.

The benefits of Art for children include:

• Improvement in the ability to be attentive and engaged in school.
• Greater self-esteem.
• Improvement in personal motivation.
• Smoother recovery from traumatic experience.
• Improvement in the ability to be self-expressive.
• An increase in experiences of validation.
• Improvement in ability to be in control.
• Increase in positive relations with adults.
• Improvement in the ability to communicate.
• Decrease in frequency and severity ratings of behavior.
• Decrease in defiant and avoidant behavior.
• More experiences of positive feedback and acceptance.
• Cognitive development synergies; for example an improvement in mathematic abilities that results from developing musical expression.

Some children have no language to describe their thoughts and feelings; visual expression offers a greater range of effective vocabulary than is possible through verbalization.

Click here to read more about why art works.