Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Physical and emotional abuse are usually inseparable. But as someone physically beaten as a child who subsequently, as an adult became the leader of a team of social workers specialising in child abuse, I can assure readers that emotional abuse is often worse and frequently more difficult to heal. In a wider context of physical and emotional violence, the ‘Reverend’ Goldschmeding’s statements reflect the main element in current US foreign policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, i.e. ‘beat them until their will is broken’. A policy that is also colluded with by the Netherlands amongst other states who support the fictitious ‘war on terror’. Not only may the ‘Reverend’ beat his children into submission, his comments inflict emotional violence on all who hear them.