CHILD ABUSE

A Nationwide Concern

Child abuse became a powerful social issue in the 1980s, generating intense media attention, heightened public concern, congressional hearings, numerous books and articles, and increased work-loads for child-protective-service (CPS) agencies. The first national studies to determine the prevalence of child abuse were conducted in 1974, and in 1979-1980 periodic National Incidence Reports were mandated by the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. In 1984 the American Humane Association (AHA) estimated that there were 1.7 million abused or neglected children in the United States. Although the methods employed in this and other studies provoked debate among experts, producing disagreement about the total numbers of abused children, there was broad agreement among professionals that the problem in America was widespread and probably growing. By 1980 nearly all states required social-service professionals who had contact with children to report any case of suspected child abuse—one factor that helped to account for the increase in reported cases. The 1988 Study of National Incidence and Prevalence of Child Abuse and Neglect estimated that in 1986, 1.5 million children nationwide had experienced abuse or neglect. Although this estimate was slightly lower than the 1984 AHA estimate, the report emphasized that its definitions for "countable" abuse cases were strict and thus its conclusions should be regarded as minimum estimates. Among its other findings, the report estimated that 1,100 children died in 1986 as a direct result of maltreatment. Among cases of child maltreatment, neglect was found to be the largest problem, representing 63 percent of all cases. The report broke abuse into three categories—physical, sexual, and emotional. Of these, physical abuse was found to be the most frequent—representing 53 percent of all cases and involving 358,000 children in 1986. In addition, the study found an increase from 1980, when it did its first survey, in the rates of physical and sexual abuse. Physical abuse had risen by 58 percent; sexual abuse had more than tripled.

Sexual Abuse Cases

Meanwhile, public concern about the issue of child abuse was fired by several highly publicized cases, including the McMartin Preschool sexual-abuse case, which raised nationwide concern about the safety of nursery schools and day-care centers. News of sexual-abuse charges against adults in the Boy Scouts of America organization and against the clergy of various religious groups fueled parents' fears. One consequence of this heightened concern was a rash of new children's books, such as Rick Chacãon's You Can Say "No!," board games such as Strangers and Dangers and Safe City, U.S.A., as well as various flashcards and coloring books. Saturday-morning cartoon shows featured public service announcements warning children not to get into strangers' cars. At some schools children attended classes instructing them what to do if someone tried to fondle them sexually. Some psychologists thought these methods were useful to educate children and their parents about important issues. Some disagreed. Psychologist Lee Salk protested, "We are terrifying our children."

Abuse in the Home

At the same time, child sexual abuse within the family became an increasingly frequent charge in custody battles between divorcing parents. Then, in 1986, national attention focused on the case of Lisa Steinberg, a six-year-old who died from injuries inflicted by her adoptive father. Lisa Steinberg's troubled face, in a picture taken shortly before her death, stared from the covers of newsmagazines. Her tragedy provoked a wave of compassion for the young victim, and outrage toward the perpetrator. In 1982 a Harris poll found that nine out of ten people thought child abuse was a serious social problem. In 1989 a Gallup poll found that 25 million Americans claimed to know children whom they suspected had been physically or sexually abused. After studying the national data on child abuse, the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, established in 1988, declared in its first report (1990) that "child abuse and neglect now represents a national emergency."

National Reports

Basing its conclusions on data gathered mainly in the 1980s, the report stated that the increase in the number of reports of child abuse in recent years had been "astronomical." "In 1974," the board observed, "there were about 60,000 cases reported, a number that rose to 1.1 million in 1980 and more than doubled during the 1980s to 2.4 million." The report acknowledged an important debate among experts about the issue of substantiation, the process by which CPS agencies determined whether child-abuse charges were supported by evidence. After investigation, many reports were dismissed. Some professionals believed the dramatic rise in child-abuse reports proved a greater public sensitivity to the issue of abuse, not that the rate of abuse was actually increasing. According to the board, however, "the absolute number of substantiated cases has increased at a rate as shocking as the increase in the number of reported cases." Of the 2.4 million cases reported in 1989, it noted, more than 900,000 were officially substantiated; and "there are reasons to believe that even that number is just a fraction of the actual incidence of child abuse and neglect." Indeed, it noted, "Surveys consistently show that large proportions of cases of suspected child maltreatment remain unreported." Furthermore, some cases unsubstantiated for lack of evidence were later confirmed.

The Child-Abuse Emergency

In concluding that child abuse "now represents a national emergency," the U.S. Advisory Board cited three findings. First, "each year, hundreds of thousands of children are being starved and abandoned, burned and severely beaten, raped and sodomized, berated and belittled." Second, the system designed to protect these children was failing; and, third, the United States was spending billions of dollars on programs that dealt with the results of child abuse, not on programs to prevent it—a failure the board called "a moral disaster." Another part of the study laid out the many factors that contributed to child abuse, especially "poverty, ethnicity, neighborhood dysfunction, mental health problems, substance abuse, and the presence of children with special needs." Regarding substance abuse, the report noted that "the extraordinary increase in the number of parents using cocaine and crack…and the severity of the injuries to children resulting from such use, has caught all parts of the system unprepared." In its final recommendations the board urged Congress and all state and local governments to view the prevention of child abuse and neglect "as a matter of national security" and urged these bodies "to increase their support for basic necessities, such as housing, child care, education, and prenatal care for low income families including the working poor."

The McMartin Preschool Case

In 1984 a case in California instantly attracted national attention and continued to preoccupy the media and much of the public with a trial that lasted six years. Investigations began after teachers at the McMartin Preschool—a well-known, highly respected fixture in the upscale community of Manhattan Beach, not far from Los Angeles—were accused of sexually abusing children in their care. According to the criminal charges brought against seven teachers at the school, during a period of years hundreds of three-, four-, and five-year-old children who had attended the preschool had been sexually abused, sometimes in bizarre rituals. Shortly after these allegations became public, claims surfaced that similar abuse had occurred at other preschools in the area. Local officials became overwhelmed by the scope of the investigations, and the district attorney's office called in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Task Force on Child Abuse. The McMartin Preschool closed its doors in January 1984, and the preliminary hearing for the seven McMartin teachers began that summer. Meanwhile, six other preschools in the South Bay area closed because of sexual-abuse allegations. The shocking charges in the McMartin trial made national headlines. As the trial plodded slowly through stage after stage of complex, confusing legal proceedings, the case became a national obsession.

Shock Wave

The McMartin case sent a shock wave through the nation. At the time, there was little information to provide a scientific context for the case. Child sexual abuse had generally been supposed to afflict older children, not preschoolers. In studies that did exist, such abuse had rarely been associated with preschools or day-care centers. As a result, psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, and social workers often provided conflicting views. Experts who testified at the trial rendered professional judgments that exactly contradicted those of other professionals. Furthermore, with more and more women entering the workforce and becoming dependent on pre-schools and day-care centers for their children, the allegations in the McMartin case and other similar cases were so frightening that mothers and fathers nationwide began to wonder if their own children were in danger of the same kind of abuse.

McMartin Aftermath

Seven years after it started, the McMartin trial, the longest in U.S. history, ended with the acquittal of all the defendants. Even so, many people believed the legal system had failed, that sexual abuse had in fact occurred at the preschool. During these years convictions were obtained in sex-abuse cases regarding other day-care centers; but in many other cases charges were later dropped or trials ended in acquittals. By the end of the decade the issue of the safety of child-care centers was not resolved in the public mind. Dr. Richard Gardner, a well-known child psychiatrist associated with Columbia University, reviewed much of the evidence from such abuse cases in the 1980s and concluded that most likely the "vast majority of allegations" were false. Many of these cases, he wrote in 1991, had "all the hallmarks of mass hysteria similar to that which took place at the time of the Salem witch trials in 1692." He did not deny that sexual abuse of children was a tragically frequent occurrence, but he believed the majority of actual abuses took place either in the victim's home or in orphanages or boarding schools. Yet in 1988 the only national study to report on incidents of sexual abuse in day-care facilities reported 270 substantiated cases of preschool sexual abuse, involving 1,639 victims.