More Children Are Victims of Violence, Studies Find : Youth: In 1991, slayings by parents or caretakers in L.A. County rose 33%. Sexual and physical abuse was up 11%.

The number of children killed by their parents and caretakers jumped by nearly 33% in Los Angeles County to 61 victims in 1991, the highest level recorded since such statistics have been kept, according to two studies to be released today.

Prepared by the Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect, the studies also show that 120,358 children in the county were sexually or physically abused, 11% more than the previous year.

In addition, the studies found the number of babies born addicted to drugs--because their mothers took drugs during pregnancy--rose to an all-time high of 2,551, up nearly 9% from a year ago.

The statistics were gathered by schools, hospitals, law enforcement agencies and social service providers who documented cases ranging from the neglect of 2-year-old twin boys who died in a swimming pool to the sexual assault and murder of an 18-month-old girl.

Though it is unclear how these rates compare to the rest of the country, both reports paint “a disturbing picture” of the conditions under which many children in Los Angeles now live, said Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, chairman of the council.

The statistics also show the “inadequacies” in an overworked social service system, which is supposed to help children but often does not get to the youngest victims of drugs and violence “until it is too late,” Block said.

Said Deanne Tilton, executive director of the council: “There seems to be a connection between child homicides and the economy. As more families slip into poverty and the stresses on those families increase, so do the risks that children in those families will be exposed to drugs, abuse and other forms of violence.”

Mothers are to blame for much of the increase in child homicides, the council found. Though mothers were criminally charged in fewer than 30% of the cases reported in 1989, they were the alleged perpetrators in nearly 40% of the cases in 1991.

In 60% of the cases, the murder weapons were the perpetrator’s hands. Typically, the victims were either beaten to death, thrown to the floor and their skulls crushed, shaken violently or drowned. Fewer than 9% were shot and 3% were stabbed.

The vast majority of victims--72%--were under the age of 2. Over half--nearly 56%--were under the age of 1.

For many years, educators and law enforcement officials have speculated that the dramatic rise in child abuse rates in the United States is the result of increased knowledge on the part of the public and a greater willingness to report suspected incidents of abuse to authorities.

“While there is probably some truth to that assessment, there is also mounting evidence that the problems are simply worse today than they were a decade or even a year ago,” Tilton said. “You can’t say we’re reporting more deaths of children. When they’re dead, they are dead. And we’re clearly seeing more deaths.”

Some trends in the report are expected to perplex educators, physicians and other child-care experts.

One trend, which the council hopes to investigate, is a tremendous variation in child abuse rates by race and class. For years, there have been more reports of suspected child abuse among black children and poor children, yet experts are not sure whether those children are at greater risk or whether their problems get reported with greater frequency.

The proportion of black children killed by parents and caretakers has declined, from 28% to 23% of all abuse-related homicides. During the same period, the proportion of Anglo victims jumped from 20% to 31%, and Asian cases rose from 7% to 15%. The percentage of Latino children among the homicide victims declined last year from 46% to 30%.

Although state law does not automatically consider infants born addicted to drugs as victims of child abuse, the council has included addicted babies in its reports over the past several years. In last year’s study, the problem of drug-addicted babies seemed to be abating, with a 10% drop in the number of such reports. This year, however, the number of reports rose 8.7% to 2,551, bringing the total increase to 39% over the past four years.

“One of the reasons so many children are being physically and sexually abused and killed is that the system does too little to prevent child abuse in the first place,” said Michael Durfee, a child psychiatrist with the county Department of Health Services and an expert in child-abuse prevention. “There are not adequate drug programs; there is not adequate prenatal care for poor mothers; there are not enough parenting programs; there is too little follow-up of families in which children are obviously at risk.”

Among the 61 cases examined, the report cited the case of “Reylene.”

Eighteen months old, she was raped, sodomized and beaten to death by her mother’s live-in boyfriend. Before Reylene was born, the family had been referred to the county Department of Children’s Services after allegations of physical abuse of an older child in the family. The case had been closed, however, after the family was “counseled about appropriate discipline,” the council’s report said.

Another case involved “Kira,” 2 months old, who died from multiple injuries, including blows to the head and spine. At the time of her birth, her mother had been referred to a drug-treatment program by the Department of Children’s Services. Yet less than a month later the department had lost track of mother and daughter.

In 1978, Durfee and other child-abuse experts set up the nation’s first “child death review team” to study cases such as these to determine what went wrong and how such tragedies might be prevented in the future. The child death review team is now under the auspices of the interagency council, which was formed in 1988 to coordinate child-abuse services among public and private agencies throughout the county.

One of the problems, the team found, is that there are far too few physicians and other health care workers trained to determine whether a young child has been intentionally abused or accidentally hurt. For example, in the San Fernando Valley and Antelope Valley area, which has one of the highest rates of child sex abuse in the state, there are no physicians trained to identify sex abuse in children, the council said.

Another question that experts would eventually like to answer is how Los Angeles compares to other counties, but that would require all cities and states to start collecting data in a uniform manner.

A more immediate problem identified by the council is that teachers, law enforcement officers, doctors, welfare counselors and other government workers in California have been forbidden by strict confidentiality laws from communicating with one another their concerns about children they believe to be at risk for sexual and physical abuse.

This summer, the death review team and the interagency council persuaded legislators in Sacramento to pass an amendment to the state’s confidentiality laws, permitting such communication on a limited basis to authorized personnel.

The council is in the process of setting up a centralized computer system, known as the Family and Children’s Index, to monitor incidents of suspected child abuse and domestic violence. Because of the budget crisis, however, there are not enough funds in state or local coffers for the $400,000 in start-up costs. As a result, the council is seeking contributions from corporations and private donors.

The system will allow social workers and law enforcement personnel “to send out a red flag” when there seems to be a problem and thus perhaps avert abuse, Block said.

“As it is now,” Tilton said, “we don’t know many of these kids exist until we find them buried in a shallow grave or thrown in a dumpster.”