Copyright 1993 by National Review Inc.
By RICHARD LOWRY and RICHARD SAMUELSON Messrs. Lowry and Samuelson are
members of NR's editorial staff.
Vol., 45, National Review, 04/12/1993
Inset Article
HOW MANY BATTERED children?
RELIABLE statistics about the child-welfare bureaucracy are scarce,
but those that exist confirm Dr. Farber's contention that the system
is at least as likely to harass innocent parents and unnecessarily
place children in a damaging foster-care system as it is to protect
abused children.
According to a Department of Health and Human Services study of 44
states (each state handles its own child-welfare system and data), in
1990 2.7 million children were reported abused and neglected. But two-
thirds of these reports (which include anonymous phone calls to ``hot
lines'') were not substantiated.
Unfortunately, that would still seem to leave 893,856 bruised,
battered, and sexually abused children. But, according to a study by
the American Humane Association, cases involving sexual or major
physical abuse in 1986 came to 153,000 -- about 20 per cent of the
total substantiated cases. (Another 84,000 cases were unspecified
physical abuse, perhaps including some cases of major physical abuse.)
The federal National Incidence Study arrived at roughly similar
results in 1986, determining there were 161,000 cases of serious
maltreatment that year.
Richard Wexler, author of Wounded Innocents, estimates that out of
every 100 reports of alleged child abuse: ``at least 58 are false; 21
are mostly poverty cases (deprivation of necessities); 6 are sexual
abuse; 4 are minor physical abuse; 4 are unspecified physical abuse; 3
are emotional maltreatment; 3 are `other maltreatment'; 1 is major
physical abuse.''
While vague categories like ``deprivation of necessities'' may save a
child from virtual abandonment by a crack mother, they also allow the
hand of the child-welfare agencies to fall heavily on low-income
households. The poor are more likely to have to leave a small child at
home alone while running an errand, or to live in a home that social
workers would consider unsanitary. Both can be classified as neglect.
According to the Illinois Department of children and Family Services,
lack of supervision was the alleged maltreatment in more than 25 per
cent of all cases reported in the state -- the most frequent charge. A
study by the Association for the children of New Jersey found that 25
per cent of Newark's foster children were taken from parents solely
because of the parents' homelessness.
Once a child is taken from his home and placed into foster care his
lot may not improve. A study in Baltimore by Trudy Festinger, head of
the Department of Research at NYU's School of Social Work, found that
28 per cent of the children in foster care had been abused while in
the system. And the ACLU's Children's Project estimates that a child
in the care of the state is ten times more likely to be abused than
one in the care of his parents.
Although caseworkers are required to make ``reasonable efforts'' to
keep a family together, a 1989 study by the University of Southern
Maine found that in 44 per cent of the cases in which a child was
taken from his home no reasonable effort had been made to keep him
there. USM's 1992 study of Kansas found that reasonable efforts had
not been made in 54.8 per cent of cases. In 86.8 per cent of cases
where a child was put in foster care, Kansas failed to make the
required reasonable effort to reunite him with his parents.
The Federal Government also provides a huge counterproductive
financial incentive. One federal program that helps states cover the
cost of placing a child in foster care and maintaining him there grew
from about $300 million in 1981 to nearly $2.7 billion in 1991. But
there is no countervailing federal program to help keep a child in his
home.
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