Blacks Most Often Named as Victims of Child Abuse : Youths: But aggressive reporting--not more mistreatment--may explain the figures, some experts say.

An unpublished study compiled within Los Angeles County’s Department of Children’s Services has found that black children are five times more likely than Anglo children and seven times more likely than Latinos to be referred to agencies as possible victims of abuse and neglect.

Child abuse experts who have reviewed the figures are not sure what to make of the controversial findings. But they cautioned that the study does not necessarily mean that black children are far more likely to be abused and neglected than others.

Previous studies have shown that when the stress of poverty is taken into consideration, there is little or no difference between racial or ethnic groups in the incidence of abuse and neglect. In this case, economics alone does not entirely explain the size of the disparity, they say.

Instead, some experts suggest that the figures probably reflect more aggressive reporting of abuse and neglect within the black community.

“It’s not that these kind of numbers overestimate the extent of child abuse in the black community,” said Mary Lee Allen, director of Child Welfare and Mental Health for the Children’s Defense Fund in Washington. It is that “the system we have in this country, not just in Los Angeles, dramatically underestimates” the numbers of Anglo and minority children who are victims of abuse and neglect.

It is widely known that black children show up more often in child abuse and neglect reports than do Anglos or other minority groups. What has surprised experts is the size of the disparity in Los Angeles County.

The new study, which focused on a single day at the end of January, found that one in every 13 black children in the county had been referred to the Department of Children’s Services as a possible victim of abuse or neglect. That compares to one in 67 Anglos, one in 93 Latinos and one in 401 Asian-Americans.

Researchers in the department have not determined whether the percentage of confirmed abuse cases reflects the same racial breakdown as do reported cases. However, similar patterns showed up in the placement of children in foster care, where they are sent in the most severe cases of abuse and neglect. According to the study, 1 in 17 blacks in Los Angeles County is in foster care, as compared to 1 in 89 Anglos and 1 in 166 Latinos. The report did not show a breakdown of Asian-Americans in foster care, although the percentage is thought to be extremely low.

The department has not released the study and is officially distancing itself from its conclusions. Last week, a spokesman said the figures were the work of a researcher in the department’s planning bureau and not sanctioned by the department’s administration. The spokesman also maintained that the number of reports of abused and neglected children was higher than the study indicated.

The study was based on the department’s own official report, which showed that as of Jan. 31, there were 46,474 children in the system. The department often breaks down its total number of cases by race. What is unique about this study is that it compares the number of individual cases to the total population of children under 18, which according to the Los Angeles County Population and Projection System was 2.5 million as of January.

According to the analysis, on Jan. 31, 1 out of 54 children in the county--1.85%--were the subject of child abuse or neglect reports. Of the 46,474 reports, 36,000 to 37,000 were already in the system. In most months, about 10,000 new reports are received, about 1,500 to 2,000 of which are expected to be confirmed cases of abuse or neglect.

Many people who have seen the study predicted that it would stir controversy among child abuse experts and in minority communities.

“There will be a lot of people who won’t want to look at this data,” said Dr. Michael Durfee, head of the County Health Department’s Child Abuse Prevention Program. Some, he added, “won’t want to talk about it because it isn’t politically correct.”

Some fear that the large numbers of black children identified in the report will be interpreted as another blow to black families who are overwhelmed by problems of discrimination. But others predict that the study may be used to get more government funds directed at the black community, rather than at growing Latino and Asian-American communities.

“There might have been a tendency to downplay these problems five years ago,” said Geraldine Zapata, director of Plaza Community Center, the first Latino child abuse treatment and prevention center in the state.

“Now I think there’s a push that’s being made by African-Americans to show the problems they are facing.”

Nonetheless, Dr. Reed Tuckson, president of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, cautioned that “it would certainly be unfair” to draw a conclusion from this data “that Afro-American parents abuse their families more than anyone else.”

The evidence that the actual incidence of child abuse occurs more often in one racial group than another is “ambiguous at best,” said Cathy Spatz Widom, a leading child-abuse researcher at the State University of New York at Albany.

A national survey for the federal government in 1988 found that, when considering cases involving children of similar economic circumstances, child abuse and neglect occur in all racial and ethnic groups at almost identical rates, said Allen of the Children’s Defense Fund.

Abuse and especially neglect of children are related to poverty, and blacks are more likely to be poor than other groups, the study found. But it is the stress of poverty, not race itself, that is associated with neglect, it found.

Sexual abuse, in contrast, is more prevalent in affluent Anglo families, according to numerous studies.

Yet time and again, more abused black children make their way into government programs than do children of other ethnic groups.

One reason is the high rate of poverty in black communities. County figures in 1990 show that 31.3% of black children were at or below the poverty line, compared to 15.5% of Anglo children, 16.4% of Asian-Americans and 28.5% of Latinos.

“Since blacks are more likely to be poor and are more likely than Latinos, Asians or other minority groups to be receiving government assistance, black children who are in trouble are more likely to come to the attention of the system,” Allen said. “They are also more likely to be suspected of abusing and neglecting their children, which in itself is a form of serious discrimination.”

Given that race does not play a significant role in child abuse, Widom said, “what we have to question is a system” that identifies abuse and neglect in so many blacks while seeming to overlook so many other children.

The Los Angeles system works much the same way as those in other cities. Reports of suspected abuse or neglect can be made by any person through a 24-hour hot line maintained by the county’s Department of Children’s Services. Reports can also be made in the city through the Los Angeles Police Department’s Abused Child Unit and in the county through the Juvenile Investigations Bureau of the Sheriffs’ Department.

Certain professionals, including doctors and teachers, are required by law to report any suspicions they have that a child is being physically or emotionally abused or has been neglected by parents or other care-givers.

In numerous studies, researchers have estimated that as many as 40% of all U.S. child abuse and neglect cases go unreported.

Many unreported cases are thought to be in the communities “where they are least expected”--that is, middle-class and affluent communities, said Deanne Tilton Durfee, executive director of the Los Angeles County Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect and vice-chairwoman of the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect.

“The communities where you don’t see abuse (but where experts are certain it exists) are those where families have known their doctors for years . . . where teachers would never dream that the symptoms they see in an affluent child could be the signs of abuse. Yet the same signs in a poor, black child would immediately be associated with abuse or neglect.”

The Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect has been pushing for more data on race and ethnicity to help government agencies figure out how to find some of those missing cases and to design programs sensitive to ethnic and racial differences.

Except for the health department’s Child Abuse Prevention program, most agencies that deal with child abuse have been reluctant to publish race data, in part because such information is politically sensitive and misleading.