Violence of any kind is hard for most people to understand, but crimes against children and crimes committed by children are perhaps the most difficult to comprehend. Child abuse and neglect is a problem with generational effects. Women who were sexually abused in childhood, for example, are more likely than non-abused women to be harsh with their children, withhold affection, or even accept the sexual abuse of their own children by a spouse or lover. Yet children are not always merely the victims of aggression. They also perpetrate violent crimes in the form of bullying, assault, and homicide, as well as crimes on property, such as vandalism. Moffatt addresses the two sides of this cycle of violence, including examples from clinical case studies and treatment options. Moffatt details crimes against children, ranging from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, sexual and physical abuse, neglect, filicide, and infanticide. He addresses aggression committed by children against other people, property, and self, including self-mutilation and suicide. Written for both professional and lay audiences, counselors, teachers, psychologists, law enforcement, medical professionals, and therapists will benefit from the psychological discussions about causes and effects of aggression.

The war against child abuse has become a war against children. Every year, hundreds of children die, thousands more are forced to live with strangers, and countless American families are torn apart. This is called a "child-protection system." While the problem of child abuse is serious and real, journalist Richard Wexler charges that our solutions to the problem have actually made it worse - in fact, hurting the very children that they were intended to help. Wexler reinforces his arguments with horrifying descriptions of children summarily removed from their homes, of families shattered because of false reports, and of children whose parents are guilty of nothing more than poverty being thrust into the maelstrom of the chaotic foster-care program. He writes of severly abused children - those needing the most help - whose cases are ignored because the system diverts scarce resources to trivial or unfounded cases, and who are reinjured, sometimes fatally after their plight has been called to the attention of authorities. Wounded Innocents illustrates how well-meaning efforts to help children have gone terribly wrong and how the current child-protection system desperately needs to be replaced with one that offers real help and real hope to abused and neglected children.

Eight years ago fifteen-year-old Lissa made a stupid mistake in an attempt to rebel, just a bit, against her strict parents. The results were disastrous. It made her parents think she was a harlot when they saw her her lying in bed with a boy. And her brother-in-law, Joel, was with them! Since then, she’s done her best to avoid him, but now Joel and Lissa have been appointed shared guardianship of their nieces after the sudden death of the girls’ parents.?Seeing Joel after so long, Grace trembles at the cold, scornful look in his golden eyes. ?

Moffatt addresses the two sides of this cycle of violence, including examples from clinical case studies and treatment options. He details crimes against children, ranging from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, sexual and physical abuse, neglect, filicide, and infanticide, and addresses aggression committed by children against other people, property, and self, including self-mutilation and suicide.

Recounts the events surrounding the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, and the trials of the three teens who were convicted of the crime.