Studies detail child maltreatment

08/23/2005

Conrad Defiebre,
Star Tribune
August 23, 2005

A new study of child maltreatment has found that more than 10,000 Minnesota children age 9 and under suffered neglect or physical, sexual or psychological abuse in 2001 and 2002.

More than 500 children, most of them under the age of 3, were hospitalized for injuries connected with the maltreatment, according to the study released Monday by the Minnesota Department of Health.

Despite these numbers, Minnesota’s rate of child maltreatment has remained nearly 40 percent below that of the nation as a whole. A separate national report found that 12.4 children per 1,000 in the United States suffered maltreatment in 2003, compared with 7.6 per 1,000 in Minnesota.

The Minnesota study was done under a grant from the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It examined not only child-maltreatment cases substantiated by county child-protection services, but also cases at hospitals, which by law are required to report suspected child abuse.

Only 15 percent of the hospital cases, however, also turned up on child-protection records, a discrepancy the study’s authors couldn’t fully explain.

Of the child-protection cases, 77 percent involved neglect. Of the hospital cases, 80 percent involved physical abuse. Most at risk in both groups were infants under the age of 1.

Birth parents, stepparents and foster parents perpetrated most of the abuse, the study showed, with the rest coming from other family members, day-care providers or baby sitters and significant others of parents. Women were deemed responsible for 60 percent of the cases reported to child-protection services, while men were blamed for slightly more than half of the hospital cases.

The study also totaled $3.1 million in charges for hospital care of maltreated children, half of it from traumatic brain injuries such as shaken baby syndrome.

Child maltreatment that resulted in hospitalization was most common in low-income areas, with the rate in ZIP codes having community median incomes of $75,000 a year or more running half to one-third of that in poorer places.