Relax. So I remembered wrong. Or more accurately remembered right but misinterpreted it.
Yeah, I did sound rather strident there, sorry for that. I just get all ‘someone is WRONG on the internet!’ now and then when someone insists upon something I know to be objectively untrue, even if it’s not important. To which pedantic end - no, you didn’t misinterpret it, you simply misremembered it, because those lines are pretty direct.
A little late to the party, but Harry is an abused child for many reasons.
The criteria for abused children are as such.
Physical Abuse
Physical abuse includes the infliction or allowing the infliction of a physical injury to a child.
As mentioned above Dudley beats Harry regularly, often enough so that Harry is wary of even walking near him. Vernon and Petunia give no indcation that they know that this is going on, but still it should have come to light through the school. It is also implied that Vernon occasionally uses coporal punishment on Harry.
Emotional abuse
Emotional maltreatment includes blaming, belittling or rejecting a child, constantly treating siblings unequally, and persistent lack of concern by the caretaker for the child’s welfare.
The Dursley’s treat Harry with absolute disdain denying him any form of love or affection while lavishing Dudley with them making it clear what he is missing as well as making it perfectly clear that he is unwanted and considered a burden. Vernon and Petunia always refer to him as freak or the boy in a dergogatory manner.
Dudley is treated like a little prince, he is given dozens of gifts on his birthday, while no mention is made of Harry’s by the Dursleys, he has no chores, is given whatever he wants, and is otherwise lavished with love and attention. Harry on the other hand is blamed for everything, given an excessive number of chores, and the Dursley’s make no mention of his birthday at all.
Neglect as defined in A.R.S. § 8-201 (22) means:
The inability or unwillingness of a parent, guardian or custodian of a child to provide that child with supervision, food, clothing, shelter or medical care if that inability or unwillingness causes unreasonable risk of harm to the child’s health or welfare, except if the inability of a parent or guardian to provide services to meet the needs of a child with a disability or chronic illness is solely the result of the unavailability of reasonable services.
Permitting a child to enter or remain in any structure or vehicle in which volatile, toxic or flammable chemicals are found or equipment is possessed by any person for the purposes of manufacturing a dangerous drug as defined in section 13-340.
They do the bare minimum to provide for him such as having him wear Dudley’s overly large and ratty hand me downs. In Chamber of Secrets when Harry is getting only a single tin of cold soup every day it is made to sound par for the course implying that he has always been feed roughly the same amount while at the Dursley’s. The cupboard under the stairs, if it is anything like most, is roughly 9 square feet only about half of which is useable by even a small child. Harry was also regularly locked in the cupboard as punishment and denied food the longest stretch of which was a week after he talked to the boa on Dudley’s birthday.
The cupboard under the stairs is also the home of a great many spiders, and possibly also used to store cleaning supplies.
The only type of abuse that is never even implied is sexual which is understandable considering that this is supposed to be a childrens series.