What is punishable under child abuse laws?
It is a crime for adults to abuse children in their care. Such adults include parents, foster parents, legal guardians, other adults in the home, family members, and baby-sitters. Supervising adults may not go beyond reasonable physical punishment. For example, adults who beat children so severely that they require medical treatment have violated these laws. Child abuse laws involve not only physical abuse (such as beatings or starvation), but other types of cruelty, such as sexual molestation and subjecting a child to extreme public humiliation. A person may be guilty of child abuse that he or she did not personally commit if that person had legal responsibility for the child and failed to protect the child from the abuser.
