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For me, the toughest thing for kids to deal with is when the parents are fighting. It's not violence on them - it's the feeling of violence in the family.

In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.

I was one of those children forced into fighting at the age of 13, in my country Sierra Leone, a war that claimed the lives of my mother, father and two brothers. I know too well the emotional, psychological and physical burden that comes with being exposed to violence as a child or at any age for that matter.

I was an abused kid.

An abused childhood affects the entire life... It affects every facet of the life.

If an adult uses violence on a child, the child will naturally assume that he too, has the right to use it on one smaller or weaker.

I was a very violent kid. I think movies and writing and art have been a way of channeling this.

People with mental health problems are almost never dangerous. In fact, they are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators. At the same time, mental illness has been the common denominator in one act of mass violence after another.

Sometimes it seems as though all parents are certain that their children are victims of abuse by other children.

Somehow it seems that all parents are certain that they themselves were victims of abuse in school and that they will not allow this to happen to their children. Even though children can also be the cruelest group imaginable - especially the cutest of them.