Interesting Findings in Study of Child Deaths
A recent study of children younger than five who died from an injury inflicted by a parent or adult caregiver found:
- Children living with adults unrelated to them are 50 times more likely to die of inflicted injuries than children living with their two biological parents.
- More than 80 percent of the time, the boyfriend of the child's mother was the unrelated adult. In 74 percent of these households, the mother's boyfriend was the perpetrator.
- Seventy-three percent of the deaths were caused by shaking or striking the child. Other deaths were caused by injuries such as burns, drowning and suffocation.
- Children living with just one biological parent are at no increased risk of inflicted injury death if no other adults live in the household. This finding is significant because it goes against a perception that children who live in single-parent homes are at an increased risk of child abuse and neglect.
- In terms of individual risk factors, children who died of inflicted injuries tended to have young mothers with less education and late or no pre-natal care and who had other children younger than five in the household.
This study was conducted by Patricia Schnitzer, an assistant professor of nursing at Missouri University, and Bernard Ewigman, a professor of family medicine at the University of Chicago, using information from Missouri's Child Fatality Review Program. That program reviews all child deaths in Missouri and includes information such as who lived with the child and, in the case of injury deaths, how the injury occurred and who inflicted it. The results of this study are being published in the journal Pediatrics.
More information about this study can be found in the article by Megan Chumacher in the Columbia Missourian.
There should be more studies on why those who are supposed to protect children are not doing their jobs. I know this for a fact that DSS does not do their job. My own two children have been abused, physically, emotionally, educationally, medically neglected, neglect, sexual abuse twice now. All in my ex's home and founded by DSS but instead of leaving the children safe with myself who has no reports on this stuff and is stable according to my psych eval, they are going to put my children BACK with their mother and her husband who both are mildly retarded and my ex suffers from paranoia for one mental health issue. Why does the state allow this to happen? You may as well ad my children to the list of fatalities now because if they go back to her that is what they will end up being. A statistic. It disgusts me.
Sincerely, Ronald Murray Jr.
PS, Mary McEniry could care less either. She's there holding up the desk and that's about it.