Marcenko et al., (2000) found that African American families are the ones usually found in low-income urban neighborhoods. In those families are mothers who have had an extreme experience of child abuse which led to psychological distress in adulthood, and which contributed to them abusing their own children. The most complex part of child sexual abuse is finding out the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator (Foston, 2003). In cases where the mother was the child being sexually abused, the perpetrator was most often a male family member whether related by blood or by marriage. "Over half (60%) of the women reporting a history of childhood sexual abuse had at least one child in out-of-home placement" (Marcenko et al., 2000, p. 322). Thankfully, there are still quite a few children who stay in their homes despite the exposure of child abuse. "The foster care population has experienced a 48% decrease since 1995. There are now just 19,000 children in care and 38 agencies providing foster care services, of which eight are agencies of color" (Dickerson, 2005, p. 44).
When a child has been abused they have an increased risk of having mental health problems (Lindsey et al., 2008). "African American children are of particular interest because they are disproportionately likely to be reported for maltreatment" (Lindsey et al., 2008, p. 79). When a mother goes through a stage of depression it plays a major role in child delinquency, alcohol problems in children, academic difficulty, and interpersonal conflict that children have with others (Lindsey et al., 2008). "Researchers have found that children of depressed parents are at greater risk of psychiatric disorders than are children of nondepressed parents" (Lindsey et al., 2008, p.80). The time that people spend abusing their children is underestimated because during the process of abuse people fail to realize what the after effects might be.
