Severe Child Abuse: A Study of Cases Reported to the Police

In the article Severe Child Abuse: A study of Cases Reported to the Police it

begins out talking about different statistics between the United States and Sweden. When

comparing the two places researchers found that child abuse in the United States is

noticeably higher than in Sweden. While the U.S. is 79.2% Sweden is only 51.3%.

Although child abuse is lower in Sweden, severe child abuse is now a growing problem

within this time period. In this article it talks about severe child abuse and compares;

those who are severely affected by child abuse to those who are mildly affected by child

abuse. Within the data collected it talks about the police reports gathered about the abuse

of children. Two groups are used for this research. They are the study group; which

consists of 20 children who have suffered severe child abuse and they also used the

reference group; which consisted of 102 of the remaining children. The results that were

found after comparing the two was in both groups was they found that more boys were

subjected to abuse than girls. Also, In the study group the average age of children abused

was 7 years and one month. In the reference group the average age of children abused

was 7 years and six months. All of the children used in this research were under the age

of 18. Another statistic found after research was in the study group 60% of children were

living with their biological parents and the rest were living with parents that were

separated. In the reference group they found that only 43% of the children were living

with their biological parents and the rest with separated parents.

In the article they defined "severe child abuse" as; "Demonstrable bodily injury,

the injury indicates a serious threat or has appeared to been caused by an object or

repeated violence, and the incident itself constitutes a serious damage such as long term

problems or even an attempt to kill" (Annerback). In the 20 severely abused cases

"injuries were documented by the medical examiner's office in 13 cases, by pediatrician

in 5 cases, and by physicians in the last two"