Child Abuse Declines, but Deaths Rise 9%, Study Finds

Virtually every week a child is killed by a parent or caretaker in Los Angeles County, and the system for preventing these tragedies remains in disarray, according to a report released today.

In fact, the report found, in 41% of the 1998 cases in which children were killed, county officials had been warned that the children were in physical peril.

Overall, reports of child abuse in the county have dropped for several consecutive years, but the annual report by Los Angeles County’s Interagency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect found a 9% rise in child homicides in 1998, the last year for which full statistics were available.

“We still have a county in which it is safer to be on the streets than in your own home,” said Deanne Tilton-Durfee, the agency’s executive director.

The annual number of child deaths--which typically involve children between the ages of 3 and 6--has averaged in the mid-40s for several years, even as reports of child abuse to the county have dropped steadily. Abuse reports dipped by 12.5% in 1998.

There were 49 child homicides during the year, however.

The majority of child deaths were literally at the hands of caretakers, who used no weapons to kill 31 of the children. The second leading cause of death was gunshot wounds, which took the lives of 16 children.

Tilton-Durfee said that most of the children who ultimately were slain had suffered repeated abuse at the hands of their eventual killers. “These kids have been through short, tortured lives.”

In 20 of the 49 deaths in 1998, the Department of Children and Family Services had warnings about the families before the children were slain. Tilton-Durfee said that in many cases the referrals to the agency centered on minor mistreatment, such as neglect, even though there had been repeated abuse. In a handful, death occurred after the agency reunited a child with a parent or parents after training to eliminate abusive behavior.

“People have to know about how many children or infants or toddlers are being killed” in the county, said Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, chairman of the interagency council. “To me, that’s a huge number.”

Not only are abuse reports down, but referrals to foster care are dropping and adoptions are rising--all positive signs, according to experts. The seeming contradiction in the statistics baffles some observers. They expect another spike in child deaths when last year’s figures are finally tabulated.

“Maybe there’s a core group of child abusers who kill their children . . . who require very intense intervention,” Tilton-Durfee said.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Donna Wills, who is a member of the interagency council, said it is inevitable that some children will die. Even with the drop in child abuse complaints, the county’s Department of Children and Family Services opened 157,000 child abuse investigations during the period studied.

“If you have that many children who are being maltreated,” Wills said, “some of them are going to die.”

In one case, the Department of Children and Family Services had already removed a 2-year-old child from the custody of the mother of Cassie, an 11-month-old child, because the mother had abandoned the 2-year-old with a baby-sitter. Cassie was dropped off at a baby-sitter’s one night and it was not until early the next morning that paramedics were called and found the child dead, according to the interagency council report.

An autopsy determined that Cassie had been spanked and had suffered a blow to the head before she died. Cassie’s mother’s other child, a 4-year-old son, was taken from her by the county. No charges have been filed yet in the case, the report says.

None of the adults accused in the deaths of the 49 children was a foster parent, and 63% of all deaths were presented to the district attorney’s office for prosecution. Charges were filed in 90% of those cases, almost all of which are pending.

The interagency council is the only agency that compiles a comprehensive report on children’s deaths in the county, and its staff must sort through reams of paperwork from various departments. A lack of coordination of databases continues to hinder efforts to protect children because no one has an accurate picture of overall child welfare, Tilton-Durfee and others said.

One graphic example in the interagency council’s report is the case of Aaron, the 6-week-old son of a homeless woman who was released from a hospital one day after giving birth to her 4-pound, 6-ounce son. “Hospital staff were apparently not concerned about Aaron’s viability,” the report states.

Aaron’s mother brought the infant to a community health clinic, which turned her away for lack of coverage. Then she brought the child to a county hospital, where he died. Only after his death was the Department of Children and Family Services notified about the case and by that time the mother--and her seven other children--had vanished.

“This case illustrates the reality frequently revealed at death review: That chances to intervene and potentially save a child’s life are sometimes missed by several agencies and individuals . . . prior to the death,” the report states.

In an effort to combat the lack of coordinated data, the interagency council successfully pushed legislation requiring state officials to record death data that are tabulated by the agency and its counterparts in California’s 58 counties.

Still, Tilton-Durfee said, more should be done to coordinate the job of protecting children. “The way you would have known” about dangers faced by children who ended up dead, she said, “is if agencies talked to each other.”

There was good news in the report, notably that even though accidental deaths were up 10% in 1998, deaths by drowning dropped 33%, possibly because of new laws requiring protection for children around newly constructed pools.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Child Deaths in L.A. County

Here are statistics from the most recent years for which data are available.

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1996 1997 1998 Homicides 53 45 49 Accidental deaths 61 86 95 Adolescent suicides 36 20 15 Fetal deaths n/a 33 38

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Source: Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect