[Physical and psychological abuse: follow-up of abused and delinquent adolescents].

Physical and Psychological Abuse: A Follow-up of Abused Delinquent Adolescents. This is a follow-up study of abused, very aggressive adolescent boys who had to be placed in an institution. A group of 252 boys were admitted between 1950 and 1977 in a limited freedom institution near Paris (France) because of delinquency or very difficult behaviour. Thirty-three of them had been abused either in their family or in other institutions during childhood. These adolescents proved to be three times more aggressive (i.e., they were involved in aggression episodes three times more often) as compared with their schoolmates who had not been abused previously. An inquiry about the subsequent life course of 22 of these 33 adolescents, made 3 to 30 years following their discharge, revealed that officially unlawful behaviour was recorded twice as often as in the life of their peers. The abused aggressive adolescents are therefore more difficult to rehabilitate than other non-abused adolescent with difficult behaviour. The author stresses this difference, which seems to be linked with a strong feeling of abandonment, and with an extreme difficulty to establish affective contacts with adults. The relationship with adults is always very fragile, and requires a large amount of tolerance regarding their aggressive behaviour.