An Evaluation and Rhetorical Analysis of Child Abuse Carries Long-lasting Effects, by Erin Henkel of the Star Courier
A link between childhood maltreatment, aggression, and maladaptive behaviors are well documented, but stating that they exist without providing strong evidence to back the claim is not enough to be considered credible. In the article, Child Abuse Carries Long-lasting Effects, the author Erin Henkel claims that “Children who experience child abuse and neglect are 59 percent more likely to be arrested as juveniles, 28 percent are more likely to be arrested as an adult, and are 30 percent more likely to commit violent crimes.” She also goes on to make claims that victims of child abuse are more aggressive than other people and that they have shown an inability to handle situations in a non-violent and aggressive manner. Her explanation for their behavioral problems is that people who experience abuse as children see the bad behaviors as “the norm,” so they don’t know any better. Though there is some truth to this claim, there are many factors that are at play with behavioral problems and children. She dropped the ball by including the financial situation, family dynamic, and outside factors that contribute to their actions.
Lack of Supporting Evidence Weakens Claims
In claims of fact, credibility isn’t handed over, it needs to be traced back to research and credible sources. Henkel’s second-hand account of maltreated children resulted in an opinion that abused children tend to be violent, aggressive, and have bad judgment. She further claims that they have difficulty determining what is right or wrong, before offering a brief solution to helping those affected by childhood maltreatment. This claim was incomplete, I found that I was searching for elaboration here. The questions that I developed were, “Who said that children who suffer from abuse are more aggressive? What factors are considered in determining aggression in children? What makes them more prone to go to juvenile hall? Most importantly, Who proved the claims being made?” Moving on, she makes a light attempt to name drop a source when she mentions Royal Family Burk, she states, “who has determined that the best way to stop child abuse is through community involvement, family intervention; counseling for the offender and the child, or ministries,” but specifically what programs is she referring to here?
Furthermore, Henkel provides her audience with facts on how local police are known to intervene when abuse is suspected and mentions the disparities between black and white children and how exposure to policing could be responsible for the exacerbating racial inequalities in the welfare system. Her evidence of problem here is very confusing because the readers are being led to believe that a problem exists, but she doesn’t follow up her claim with important details on where this information can be found, making it too vague to trace back to one source. Credibility is built upon through facts, the credentials of who is making the statement fact, and where it can be traced back to. Without being able to track the source, the claim of fact has lost all credibility.
What to look for when determining the credibility of a paper?
In deciding a topic to analyze, I first observed the title, then headings, and lastly, I skimmed the overall paper for anything that stood out to me. By doing the initial observation, I was able to determine a level of credibility for the author and paper. This made it easier to develop questions before reading. After skimming the paper, I was skeptical about the publisher. The publisher was not associated with a school, government agency, and it wasn’t known for writing articles on helping victims of child abuse. This was a red flag to question the credibility of the article because if it intended to persuade people to help abuse victims there must be some level of understanding for the subject, but the information given was very short, vague, and on the surface. Another thing that caught my attention was the title, it didn’t seem catchy or complete, so it raised questions on whether it was a student blog, a list of items, or if it was going to turn out just as it has, an incomplete piece of writing. The layout was okay, but she lacked a full thesis and provided the audience with a one-liner to introduce her topic. She started with, “Child maltreatment can lead to many developmental and emotional challenges as a child grows up.” Following it, she laid out a citation filled with someone else’s ideas. I would have liked to read original ideas that she came up with, or thoughts on the subject matter before slamming the reader with citations in the second sentence. Though I thought she was vague, there were some things that I did like about her paper. I appreciated the subtitles that were given, and they seemed promising when I skimmed the paper.
Unfortunately, as I continued reading, I noticed the content within it wasn’t helping her to thoroughly develop her ideas. But the biggest letdown was her conclusion, it unexciting and very abrupt. I would have wanted to read her summary of the long-term impact of child abuse, see her highlight significant points, then sum up her paper by stressing the importance and moral responsibility of communities to work toward child abuse prevention and rehabilitation. Hitting the key ideas and restating her point could have strengthened her article, but it fell short.
How does the author present her claims?
A few things that I observed about Henkel is that she relies on the authority of the individuals in her citations to prove a point that child abuse exists and that it negatively influences the victims of it in the long term. Her article is using the appeal to authority fallacy to persuade her audience that a problem exists and requires attention. The issue here is that she never states clear proven facts and she still does not provide links to organizations, studies, surveys, or citations at the end of her article to prove the accuracy of her findings. This makes it difficult to determine the credibility of her information, therefore making her audience skeptical of her work. Another thing that stood out to me is that she tries, but fails to appeal to her audience from a pathos perspective. It seems as if she wants her reader to find her research serious and shocking, but her tone throughout the paper tends to return to a cold, uninformed, and unaffected vibe. Henkel generalized all people who suffered from abuse as children. She didn’t separate people based on different factors that affected their outcomes. Instead of generalizing, she could have included other factors such as environment, economic status, social status, neighborhood, or other outside factors, by doing so it would have given the audience a better visual of who specifically is affected.
Besides being seemingly vague and having an inconsistent tone, her method of laying out the details of the “long-lasting effects of abuse,” was primarily through the account and experience of other organizations, counselors, or officials. It was rare to hear her voice opinion or to hear her perspective, so it was a challenge to determine her position throughout the article. In choosing to drown out her own voice, it would have been nice to have hyperlinks to refer to. One instance of this is when she states, “Adults who were abused as children can also experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and exhibit anxiety, fear, disassociation, substance abuse, addiction, eating disorders, distrust of others, and suicidal thoughts/tendencies.” After reading this, a citation should have been included, but it was absent. This created questions about whether it was proven, if so, which specific studies have said that, what percentage of child abuse victims are affected, and what other factors are considered? Overall the author speaks in a very broad and simple way. There were very few ways to determine the exact group of people she was discussing and she does not describe the intervention process that she briefly touches on, yet she felt compelled to offer solutions for abused individuals. I questioned the author’s credibility because she failed an attempt at persuasion raised some concerns.
Who is writing the article and what is their authority over the subject?
The inconsistencies, vagueness, and lack of personal perspective increased the curiosity about Erin Henkel. It prompted me to do further research on who the author is, to understand what her authority is over the subject matter. The Star Courier fails to provide a photo, an email, or detailed information about the writer. Her education, expertise, and background were not indicated. Therefore, the writer could be anyone.
In my rhetorical evaluation and analysis of the article Child Abuse Carries Long-lasting Effects, by Erin Henkel, I would have to say that the credibility of the author is not there. She did not present a clear thesis with the purpose of the writing. I have also found the content to be incomplete with minor grammatical errors, and she provided an unsatisfactory conclusion.
She was informative in presenting the fact that abuse exists and she did well will providing the name and positions of the individuals that she cited in her paper, but it simply wasn’t enough to determine the validity of her sources and the information that they gathered. Furthermore, I noticed that her tactic was to appeal to authority, by using the credibility of the sources given. The problem with this is that unless you do your own research to see if the named individuals and their organizations existed, or if the said sources had conducted certain studies, you wouldn’t know if they were credible witnesses and/or sources. She also tried to appeal to the emotions of the audience by using certain trigger words, but the tone throughout the paper and how she transitioned through various ideas wasn’t able to make up for the lack of plain hard facts. Finally, after analyzing and evaluating the article, I have found that it did not pass the CRAAP Test, and I failed to identify who the writer Erin Henkel is due to the lack of information on the web page and in a general search of the internet. Therefore, I would not choose to use the article, “Child Abuse Carries Long-lasting effects,” by Erin Henkel of the Star Courier to cite as a credible source of information.
