Sexual or otherwise, early-life abuse left unchecked typically causes the young child’s brain to improperly develop. It can readily be the starting point of a life in which the brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammatory stress hormones and chemicals, even in otherwise non-stressful daily routines.

It can amount to non-physical-impact brain-damage abuse: It has been described as a continuous, discomforting anticipation of ‘the other shoe dropping’ and simultaneously being scared of how badly you will deal with the upsetting event, which usually never transpires.

The lasting emotional/psychological pain from such trauma is very formidable yet invisibly confined to within the brain/mind. Unlike an openly visible physical disability or condition that tends to elicit sympathy/empathy from others, mental trauma is solitarily suffered and can readily make each day an ordeal, unless the turmoil is prescription and/or illicitly medicated.

As a moral rule, a mentally as well as physically sound future should be every child’s fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter.

God bless those children. They deserve a family that loves them with all their heart and soul as all children do.