Emotional Abuse

Some columns you want to write so well, you end up blowing it. This may be one of them because I'm wondering if I can capture the spirit of a moment last weekend. It was a moment that lent itself much more to abstractions like soul and goodness of heart than it does to the black-and-white of a narrative. In a way, you almost had to be there. If you had, you would have been moved by what you saw.

A Rancho Cucamonga woman who fatally shot her ex-husband as he attempted to assault her will not be charged in the killing because she fired in self-defense, authorities announced Wednesday. Annette M. Burgin, 32, spent Wednesday afternoon with Orange County prosecutors, describing the years of abuse that she and her two young sons suffered at the hands of her ex-husband, her attorney said. After questioning the distraught woman, Deputy Dist. Atty.

A woman accused of fatally shooting her abusive ex-husband was released from custody Tuesday after Orange County prosecutors tentatively decided that she will not be charged with murder. Deputy Dist. Atty. Lew Rosenblum said that a final decision would be made today on what charges, if any, might be filed against 32-year-old Annette Burgin of Rancho Cucamonga who allegedly shot her ex-husband in La Habra on Sunday afternoon.

Carol met and Richard (not their real names) at a football game during her sophomore year at Woodbridge High School in Irvine. He was a college freshman at the time, so when he showed interest in her, she thought it was a dream come true. Little did she know then that her dream would turn into a nightmare of physical and emotional abuse that would last six months. What follows is a true story of ordeal experienced by many teen-age girls such as Carol who are victims of date abuse.

"There has to be a better way to live." After 40 years of physical and emotional abuse--from being locked in closets by her court-appointed guardians as a toddler to being confined to her boyfriend's house as a woman--Tania Roberts said this idea finally struck her harder than any man ever had.

In response to "Cruelty That Is Not Unusual" (Column One, Dec. 12): "When you're a parent, you snap at your child, that's not emotional abuse--that's something you apologize for. But, when it gets to be chronic, and the child starts suffering, then it's emotional abuse." This was attributed to a California mental health authority. This statement epitomizes the tragedy of the child in our society. It's analogous to dropping a computer on the floor and declaring, "no harm done," if the lights come back on when you plug it in. Does a little abuse do no harm?

Some instances of child abuse are clear cut: A mother routinely kicks her 8-year-old son; a father enters his 12-year-old daughter's room and molests her. But what do you call it when a parent hurts a child without touching? How about the father who persistently belittles his son for not playing football? Or the mother who refuses to let her children bathe because she doesn't want to spend money on soap? Or the stepfather with a habit of berating his wife's child as "stupid"?

Unlike Woody Allen's character in the film "New York Stories," Beverly Engel won't tell you she "loves her mom but wishes she would disappear." The 42-year-old Californian just wishes her mother would disappear. Period. Sit down with Engel and you soon get the message hers is not an everyday mother-daughter tiff. Her harshest words aren't spoken in outbursts of rage, though she admits she's still angry. Her resentment is expressed mostly in flat, calculated and articulate sentences that take on the objective gloss of the professional therapist and marriage counselor that she is. But at 42, Bev Engel cannot forget what happened.

About 80,000 cases of serious emotional abuse of children were reported in 1986, although most Americans recognize that repeated yelling and cursing at a child lead to long-term emotional problems, a child welfare group reported Tuesday. Even so, the figure represents only a fraction of the number of children who suffer verbal and psychological mistreatment, said Ann Cohn, executive director of the group, the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse.

House of Judah founder William A. Lewis and six followers were sentenced to prison Friday for enslaving children at the sect's former southwest Michigan camp. U.S. District Judge Douglas Hillman sentenced Lewis, 63, a self-proclaimed prophet, and sect leaders Larry Branson, Robert McGee and Theodore Jones Sr. to serve three years in prison for conspiring to enslave children with threats, beatings and other physical and emotional abuse. The sect leader's son, William L. Lewis, and Eddie Green Jr.