Deadly Child Abuse Cases Double In Central Florida

ORLANDO -- Child abuse is on the rise in Central Florida.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, the number of fatal child abuse cases in Central Florida more than doubled in the last year from 14 to 30.

Already this year, the deaths of 59 children are under investigation.

The chairwoman of the state's Child Abuse Death Review Team believes we will see another increase next year. Major Connie Shingledecker believes the recession may be a contributing factor as unemployment and financial problems are increasing people's stress levels.

Men are usually the perpetrators in abuse cases, while women lead in neglect.

Statistics show the most typical abuser profile is the boyfriend of a single mom, 18 to 30, and unemployed.

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Despair is no excuse for violence against children

Parents are responsible for protecting their child, and allowing any abuse to continue is unacceptable

Claudia Jones (Damned by despair, 6 May) argues that women who allow their partners to abuse their children do so "because they are in utter despair" due to the lack of love they have experienced in their lives, and that "unless we can understand that despair ... we will not be able to address seriously the problem of child abuse".

I am a survivor of intra-familial sexual child abuse, and I find her sympathies misplaced. Few abuse survivors would disagree with her that "we are not training ... enough social workers" qualified in child protection work.

Similarly, I agree that the idea "the child is best with the natural family" needs to be questioned where the child is known to have been abused by an adult family member, and I'd support her view that it is "time to fund a significant expansion of our non-medical mental health service staff", not least for those of us dealing with the after-effects of abuse.

But the starting-point for any discussion should be that there is no acceptable level of child abuse. The real victims are abused children - it is we who have to overcome the devastating effects of being raped as a child by a parent or other caregiver who we thought was supposed to love us.

When this is compounded by another parent who allows the perpetrator to get away with the abuse, the damage to the child's self-esteem is incalculable. The trauma to which we were subjected leads us to suffer from depression, difficulties in forming intimate relationships, loss of family, terrible flashbacks and many other wounds, from which it is a lifetime's work to recover.

Researchers estimate that at least 10% of people were sexually abused as children. Incestuous abuse of children by parents is known to be far more common than anyone would have believed 20 years ago. Intra-familial abuse is not confined to economically marginal households: it also occurs in outwardly respectable families.

My abuser was my father; when I disclosed the abuse to my grandmother as a child, my mother insisted that the police should not be called and told me never to speak about it. My parents were both Catholic school teachers. They continued to live together as a married couple until my father's death. Today I am on a journey of healing and have recovered a sense of my own self-worth, but it has been a long and rocky road.

I want to see a world in which it is unthinkable for an adult to inflict the pain of abuse on any child - and for another adult to stand by and let it happen. This cannot come about if we give the message that mothers who tolerate the abuse of their children by their partners are to be pitied or condoned.

The overriding responsibility of any parent is to do everything in their power to protect an abused child from further suffering. When there are reasonable grounds for suspecting abuse, it should be immediately reported, and carers should take action to keep the child safe without delay.

• The writer is an incest survivor who is actively recovering from the effects of the abuse he experienced response@guardian.co.uk

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Rising Child Abuse Deaths Blamed on Economy

SACRAMENTO, CA -- Child homicides from abuse and neglect have soared 300 percent in Sacramento County, according to a 2009 Child Death Review Team Report.

In 2007, there were three child homicides in the region due to abuse. But that number soared to 12 deaths in 2008.

The report was compiled by the Child Abuse Prevention Center which presented its findings Tuesday to Sacramento County Board of Supervisors.

Some experts attribute the spike to the faltering economy.

"We're seeing families not able to provide for children, feeling the stress of not being able to make it," said Sheila Boxley, Director of the Child Abuse Prevention Center.

Boxley asked the supervisors and members of the Sacramento City Council to preserve funding for support and outreach services to low-income families at-risk.

Boxley said, "If funding to social services goes, we could see an even worse death report next year."

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Recession Puts Children In Harm's Way

CBS' Sandra Hughes On How Financial Frustration, Budget Cuts Increase Child Abuse Risk

It’s the pictures that I can’t get out of mind. They are so horrible they will break your heart and make you mad all at once. I’m talking about the x-rays, scans and photographs that Amy Terreros and her team at Phoenix Children’s Hospital use as their tools in the battle against child abuse. I can’t forget the x-rays of a little boy whose caregiver brought him in to the emergency room because he supposedly choked on cereal and passed out.

Terreros, a pediatric nurse practitioner, and the pediatrician, Dr. Stephanie Zimmerman, didn’t believe the story. Whenever a case comes into the hospital and abuse is suspected, Terreros’ team is called in on a case. They work like detectives ordering medical tests and x-rays that will uncover the real story behind a child’s injury. On this case the x-rays uncovered more broken bones; one arm fracture, then another.

“How could this child be functioning?” I asked Terreros and Dr. Zimmerman. Terreros told me that the child probably wasn’t walking and then showed me the next x-ray. It showed a broken leg bone, and she said his other leg had been broken, too. In fact, this toddler had four broken bones all in different stages of healing. That was all I could take; tears sprang to my eyes. My cameraman Les Rose stopped shooting, and my producer Kristen Muller was also getting choked up. We’re all three parents and these images are a harsh reality we don’t see every day.

The team at Phoenix Children’s sees it all the time but something has changed. They say they are getting even more cases due to the impact of the recession on families. Terreros has seen a 40 percent increase in the number of cases her team investigates compared to the same time last year. In the past two months Terreros has had two cases she directly connects to the economy. In one, the child was staying with dad, who had been laid off and had never before been in the role of primary care-giver. The child ended up in the emergency room with a broken bone.

According to Dr. Rachel Berger at Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital, cases of shaken baby syndrome, when a baby is shaken so violently it can be permanently brain damaged or killed, have been on the rise lately.

Boston Children’s Hospital usually takes in 1,500 cases of child abuse annually. Last year, that number increased to 1,800.

Seattle Children’s Hospital says child abuses cases have gone up 30 percent. The recession, they believe is playing a role. In Beaufort, South Carolina, where unemployment in a five-county area is up 700 percent, child abuse cases have increased 64 percent over last year.

That’s where we heard first hand about how financial frustration turns to abuse. A single mom didn’t want to be identified but she admitted to abusing her kids. Her husband is in prison. She is trying to make ends at a low-paying job. She knows that if she tried to move there wouldn’t be much opportunity for her elsewhere. The pressure is getting to her. She screams too much at the children, three girls and a young son. Her six-year-old daughter has been on the wrong end of much of her anger. The mom threw a hairbrush at her and gave her a black eye. She wrestled her to the ground of a parking lot when the girl was throwing a fit and someone called the police. She told the police she sometimes goes too far in disciplining the kids but she’s at the end of her rope.

Luckily for her, she found a program called Hope Haven of the Lowcountry in Beaufort, S.C.

Her children are getting intense counseling while she receives help with parenting strategies and conflict-resolution techniques. The mother is getting the tools she needs to deal with her anger in other ways. Still, sometimes she hears the kids say, “Stay away from mom, she’s not in a good mood,” and that makes her worry about the long-term impact on her children.

Not all child abuse experts believe the economy is causing a spike. Carole Jenny of Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Rhode Island says "I’m wondering if a lot of hospitals aren’t doing better case finding."

The numbers may be anecdotal right now and the Federal Government’s reporting lags behind so it can’t verify a trend. Still, more and more children’s hospitals are worried.

There is no denying that states have had to slash budgets and sometimes services that would treat and prevent child abuse. In Phoenix, where home values have dropped in half and entire neighborhoods look like ghost towns, the story gets worse. The state’s budget has been slashed drastically, and 15 percent of the Children Protective Services budget had to be eliminated. As a result, 181 frontline case workers, who identify “at risk” families and work on preventing child abuse, lost their jobs. The budget cuts also mean low-level complaints will not be investigated. The remaining workers have to take work-week furloughs, cut back on cell phone use, and visit fewer families.

“It was a gut wrenching decision to make. Nobody wanted to make that decision but it was necessary,” said Gary Arnold of the Arizona Department of Emergency Services.

What happens to those low level cases? How many become serious? They don’t know the answer to that question at Arizona’s Children Protective Services agency, but Amy Terreros of Phoenix Children’s Hospital thinks she knows.

“A child is left in an unsafe situation and then they come in here, critically ill.”

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