ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to examine children who suffer maltreatment and seem to escape the negative consequences. These children are said to be resilient; they have the ability to come through negative life events relatively unscathed or even to thrive in the face of adversity. The chapter begins by addressing ways to define and measure the concept of resiliency before turning to the incidence of resilience seen among maltreated children. The main portion of the chapter focuses on factors associated with being resilient by examining the level of trauma suffered, the amount of family and caregiver support that is present, community factors, victim characteristics, and the interaction between genes and environment. The chapter concludes by making it clear that all children who are the victims of child maltreatment suffer at the hands of those who abuse or neglect them and many carry lifelong physical and emotional scars. The message of this chapter is that while working to eradicate all maltreatment, we can try to find factors that increase resiliency so that we can best support all victims and increase the chance that they lead happy and fulfilling lives.
