Saving Battered Children

Each year hundreds of U.S. children are brutally assaulted and even killed by their own parents. In 1962 alone, the American Humane Association found 662 newspaper reports of parents who beat, burned, drowned, stabbed and suffocated their children with weapons ranging from baseball bats to plastic bags. Most of the victims were under four; one-quarter died. If all such cases were reported, say some experts, the total would reach 10,000 a year. Many doctors suspect that more U.S. children are killed by their parents than by auto accidents, leukemia or muscular dystrophy. But the problem is more than medical. "Battered-Child Syndrome"--the telltale symptoms of child beating--has become the law's latest headache.

Mandatory Reports. "Child abuse is not a new phenomenon," says Katherine B. DeHinger, chief of the U.S. Children's Bureau. What is new is the increase and violence in the attacks. Under the stress of modern life, more and more parents apparently vent anger and frustration on the easiest targets at hand. But while it is relatively easy to recognize a case of child beating, it is relatively difficult to nab the child beaters. They invariably deny responsibility, often take the victim to a different doctor after each successive beating. Since the infant can rarely speak for himself, the parental denial reinforces a doctor's natural hesitation to consider beating as the cause of injury. To make matters worse, doctors fear being sued for slander if they tip off the police and the charge turns out to be false.

In a head-on attack on the problem, the Children's Bureau has drawn up a model state law requiring all doctors and hospitals to report suspected child beatings immediately to the police. Willful failure to report orally and by writing as soon as possible would be a misdemeanor. (Beating itself is a felony.) At the same time the model law grants immunity from civil or criminal liability to anyone reporting "in good faith." Already 21 states have enacted some form of the law. The New Jersey assembly did so last spring, for example, after being horror-struck by the case of a six-year-old girl whom police found badly beaten and wearing a dog collar around her neck.

Is Law Enough? Unfortunately, even the best battered-child laws are useless if doctors' reports are not effectively followed up. The American Humane Association's Vincent De Francis thus questions the idea of reporting to the police. "This means viewing the case in terms of possible prosecution of the parent," says De Francis. But parental guilt is often impossible to prove, and the very threat of punishment may deter parents from getting medical help. As Mrs. DeHinger puts it: "The Children's Bureau does not want to put brutal parents in jail so much as to save the child."

Toward that end, Colorado's law clearly states: "Social services shall be made available in an effort to prevent further abuses, safeguard and enhance the welfare of such children, and preserve family life wherever possible." Colorado's doctors report to the police, but the police then report to county welfare departments, which handle the problem on a nonpunitive basis. Mandatory reports also go to child protective agencies under 1964 laws in New York, Kentucky, Michigan, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

But even this may not be enough, warns Columbia Law Professor Conrad G. Paulsen, who is now completing the first national study of battered-child laws. "Mandatory reporting is only the tip of the iceberg. The problem is whether social agencies have the manpower to implement the reports. And the country's social agencies are now stretched to the limit."

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