Another hard-hitting child abuse PSA from the ISPCC

Here’s your Monday downer. This powerful performance by a young actress for The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children starts with a shocker, and gets more grim from there. If you have a child, or even just a heart, it’s difficult to sit through all 50 seconds of her sad verbal self-abuse.

This is the same organization behind last year’s brutal “I Can’t Wait Until I Grow Up” ad, featuring a little boy getting the crap beat out of him while delivering an emotionless monologue about stopping abuse. It was banned by the ASA.

According to the new campaign’s YouTube page, “The girl in the video encompasses the many stories we hear from children every day of the week, children who experience feelings of worthlessness, who feel unloved and feel they do not deserve to be happy.”

Unlike many similar ads, this one doesn’t give the viewer a clear way out. It just provokes negative emotions and leaves you there, wondering what you can do about it.

Apparently, what the organization asked of people when they launched the campaign last spring was to buy and wear an ISPCC Shield pin to raise funds and awareness. I wish they had somehow asked for more.

There are also radio PSAs, which can be heard here.