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Child Abuse Rose 9% in ‘95, Group Says

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

An annual report on the abuse and murder of children in Los Angeles County reveals that a number of youths continue to be the victims of their parents or caretakers and that doctors and other health care professionals too often miss early danger signs.

Forty-nine youngsters--ranging in age from two newborn girls to a 16-year-old boy--were killed by their guardians or parents in 1995. The types of fatal abuse included head trauma, gunshot wounds, strangulation, suffocation, drowning and starvation.

The report, which will be released today by the Los Angeles County Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect, found that the number of child abuse cases rose 9.4% in 1995, to 185,550 from 169,638 a year earlier. The council is made up of public and private health care officials who have issued the report annually since 1989.

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After several years in which child abuse and homicide cases dropped, council leaders found the upsurge discouraging.

“It’s a cause of great concern because we had hoped to see another decline,” Deanne Tilton, the group’s executive director, said.

Tilton said the upswing might represent an anomaly. Various factors might cause the death count to fluctuate from year to year, she said. The 1996 report, for example, might be affected by the slayings early in the year of six children in a house fire set by their father.

But there are also troubling societal factors that might have contributed to the numbers, she said. Although unemployment has begun to level off, for instance, the poverty rate is increasing and instances of substance abuse and domestic violence are on the rise.

One of the report’s key recommendations is to better determine the relationship between domestic violence and fatal child abuse.

There are also disturbing indications that the health care system--both public and private--is failing to identify young abuse victims who are subsequently killed, Tilton said. In some of the cases, however, families may not have had access to health care or did not seek treatment for abused children.

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According to the report, 12 of the homicide victims had been seen by doctors at county hospitals. The report did not show how many, if any, of the victims had previously been treated at private hospitals.

Tilton said autopsies showed that significant numbers of the 49 victims had previously been abused, suffering harm such as multiple fractures and internal injuries.

“We are still profoundly under-reacting to the physical abuse of very young children throughout the system,” said Tilton, adding that the problem is most acute in the health care system.

County health officials acknowledge that more could be done. There have been problems in recording and sharing medical histories of abuse victims, according to Michael Durfee, director of the Child Abuse Prevention Program for Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

“We need to tighten that up and we need to make sure the records are reviewed by someone competent to look at them,” he said.

The council recommended improving the coordination of medical records involving child abuse.

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Durfee noted that child welfare authorities are rarely held accountable when tragedy occurs.

“Medical professionals, school officials, child care providers, everybody who has a license to care for kids needs some level of accountability for their action or inaction,” Durfee said. “The laws are incredibly inadequate; the licensing boards need to get involved.”

The failure of some child welfare agencies to prevent the deaths of children in their care has sparked concern and outrage.

County attorneys have criticized some dependency court judges for putting children at risk of abuse, especially after the death a year and a half ago of Lance Helms, a North Hollywood boy who was placed in a home despite the warnings of county social workers.

A recent state audit, meanwhile, criticized the county for doing a poor job of protecting children.

The council’s report found that 15 of the families in which there was a child homicide had had previous contact with the Department of Children and Family Services.

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The department’s director, Peter Digre, said an in-house review determined that only nine of the cases were active at the time the children were killed. Digre said that in three of those cases social workers failed to follow procedures. In two other cases, departmental recommendations were overruled by judges. In the remaining four cases, social workers followed procedures and felt the child was in no danger.

“We keep studying these things constantly and look at them upside-down, backward and forwards to see if there was anything we can do to improve how we handle these cases,” Digre said. “But if our workers are following procedures for child safety and something terrible happens, it’s a terrible thing. But we support our staff.”

The Inter-Agency Council was established in 1978 to review child deaths and abuse. Other fatalities in 1995 included 59 accidental deaths, 11 suicides, 11 fetal deaths caused primarily by substance abuse and 15 cases in which the coroner was unable to determine the cause of death.

The causes of death included prolonged abuse or sudden assaults, such as the mother who threw her 22-month-old child into the Los Angeles River near San Pedro then jumped in and held his head underwater until he drowned.

Mothers, who were the largest single category of perpetrators, were involved in 20 of the slayings. In 17 of the cases, death came at the hands of a boyfriend, stepfather or other caregiver. The report found that 62% of the assailants were men, most frequently either a father or the mother’s boyfriend.

Seventy-three percent of the child abuse homicides were caused by head bashing, punches to the stomach, strangulation and suffocation.

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Increases were recorded in physical, emotional and sexual abuse cases as well as general neglect. But reported cases of severe neglect and infants exposed to drugs before birth dropped.

Child Deaths

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Child Deaths

Here is a year-by-year comparison of the number of children killed by their parents or caretakers in Los Angeles County since 1989:

1989: 42

1990: 46

1991: 61

1992: 46

1993: 41

1994: 39

1995: 49

Other findings from the Child Death Review Team Report for 1996 include:

* 35 (73%) of the victims of child homicide in 1995 were boys, the highest percentage of male victims since these deaths have been tracked.

* 35 (73%) of the homicide victims were less than 2 years old.

* 35 (73%) of the fatalities were caused by direct assault, the perpetrators using no weapon other than their hands.

* 16 mothers, 10 fathers and 8 boyfriends of mothers were criminally charged in the deaths. Three of the assailants were sentenced to life in prison; 10 received 2- to 10-year prison terms; 3 received jail terms of a year or less.

Source: Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect

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