Real child abuse/ Mcgonagall

[Miles]

No: HPFGUIDX 145584

dumbledore11214 wrote:
> The line though between bullying and especially emotional abuse is
> very thin, no? What one person sees as bullying, especially by the
> person in power, another one sees as abuse, IMO.

Miles:
You are talking about emotional abuse - but the prerequisite for emotional
abuse is a emotional connection between abuser and abused. Typical emotional
abuse happens between parents and children. Sometimes an adult builds up a
situation of trust, security and love to a child and exploits this emotional
relationship later - teachers can do this.
There is no such thing like an emotional relationship between Neville and
Snape, and Snape is far away from a position to emotionally abuse Neville.

Another necessity for abuse is that they cause or could cause serious
behavioural, cognitive, emotional, or mental disorders. We never saw any
student of Snape's classes that suffers from any of this.

The only situation I would agree that child abuse happened in HP are the
detentions with Umbridge. We discussed this before - the symptoms are
striking: Harry feels responsible for his humiliation, he does not dare to
complain because he fears Dumbledore could get into trouble. He never talks
about the abuse (shame), and when finally Ron and Hermione find out about
it, they are aghast far beyond anything that they ever thought about Snape.
And finally, Harry could only talk openly about the abuse to ... was it
Dean?, another victim of Umbridge.
This is the description of classic child abuse, very well done by Rowling,
and I'm quite sure she studied true cases of abuse to give us this dense
subplot. She did it very well.

We can agree, that Snape is a nasty person and an unfair teacher, far away
from treating his students equally and respectful. But abuse - no canon
support for this, if we do not use very private definitions of child abuse,
but scholastic ones.

Miles