Child abuse in America is a cycle that repeats itself, said psychologist Brian Allen in a speech Monday night.

Hillsdale’s Psi Chi psychology honorary sponsored Allen’s speech, entitled “Looking Back to Look Ahead: A Retrospective from 20 Years Fighting Child Abuse on the Frontline.”

“In child abuse in particular, we see cycles that repeat over and over again,” Allen said. “We’re at a point right now where we can see where we’re at and predict where we’re going.”

Allen, a 2002 Hillsdale alumnus, currently works at Pennsylvania State College of Medicine and Pennsylvania State Children’s Hospital and has studied the psychology of child abuse for over a decade.

His speech looked at many historical landmarks of child abuse as well as current issues.

Studies by people like John Caffey, M.D., began to recognize child abuse as an issue after World War II, Allen said. 

“You had John Caffey who concluded that there was more to kids’ broken bones than scurvy and brittle bone disease,” Allen said. “But he declined to say exactly what that extra thing was.”

It was later discovered that this missing piece was child abuse.

“We had these mandated reporting laws in all of the states between 1963 and 1966 that shone more light on the problem of child abuse,” he said. “A national incidents study was done every 10 years and we knew approximately how many children were being abused.”

Later, Allen said, funding from the government was retracted and conversations about child abuse lessened. 

“By the time we got to the end of the early ’80s, child abuse was not really on the radar anymore,” he said.

Talk of trauma began in the early 2000s, and was especially apparent after 9/11, with the uncovering of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church causing tensions to rise, Allen said.

It was traumatic events such as these that led to the use of trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, he said.

“It’s exposure therapy,” Allen said. “When the patient gets to the point where they’re not afraid to talk about their experience anymore and all the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder disappear. That’s ultimately the goal of this kind of therapy.”

Today, Allen said the problem is that the home, where most child abuse occurs, cannot be criticized.

“The reality is the vast majority of sexual abuse happens in the home,” Allen said. “But the only thing we’re allowed to talk about is the system — that is something we can take on.”

Senior Paige Conway said this point relates to the immediate community. 

“I found it interesting how Dr. Allen drew attention to the fact that systems of abuse are criticized but not individuals,” she said. “Most child abuse is done by someone close to the child, but people are unwilling to discuss the facts or believe that it could happen in their community.”

Senior psychology student Taylor Royston said the history behind a lot of these ideas was shocking to her. 

“This has been an ongoing problem and fight since World War II,” she said. “There has been so much misinformation spread and things stated about child abuse that is simply not true and has no data to back it up.”

Despite its history, research on child abuse has a long way to go, Royston said. 

“This is an area that still needs to be researched since the data is showing things people have never even thought of,” she said. “There need to be agencies and people who know about child abuse researching this and working on this nationwide.”

Royston said she thinks this speech was a unique opportunity for students to learn more about an area of psychology that is not talked about enough.

“I think this speech offered insight into things that we do not think of normally,” she said. “It allowed us to see that this is an ongoing fight that needs to be talked about and researched more so that we are focusing on helping the children and finding out what works for them.”

Psychologists must keep working on the problem to gradually make it better, Allen said.

“We have to fight the fight that we can fight and do what we need to do to combat this problem,” he said. “I just pray that it doesn’t take other big incidents to make changes.”