The medical university where she works treated 19 children with head injuries consistent with beatings or being severely shaken last year, including four who died, up from just a handful the year before. Victims averaged about seven months old.
“Around December I saw much more than I usually see. I usually get one consult a month. And we were quadrupling that,” she added. “I’m seeing more severe physical abuse. In general there’s a lot more stress right now in society. And it comes out on the kids. They are the weakest link.”
Some doctors term such cases “shaken-baby syndrome,” which the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke says bear distinct signs: brain hemorrhaging, retinal hemorrhaging and damage to the spine, neck or ribs.
Because of a baby’s relatively large head and weak neck, shaking “makes the fragile brain bounce back and forth inside the skull and causes bruising, swelling and bleeding, which can lead to permanent, severe brain damage or death,” it says.
“We saw a huge influx of shaken-baby cases,” said Alice Newton, medical director at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Child Protection Team, which treated 25 children for serious abuse this year. That compares with 16 for all of last year.
In a typical year she might see up to 14 children for serious inflicted head trauma. But she’s already seen nine this year. Many are from families without the usual warning signs such as a prior history of abuse or drug problems.
One four-month-old girl was admitted in a “staring spell” and needed surgery to remove fluid around her brain. The father had been laid off and the mother was working. Money was tight; some utilities had been shut off.
“That clearly is a family that is stressed,” she said.
The girl was treated a month earlier for similar symptoms and vomiting, but doctors at the time didn’t suspect abuse.
Such cases in Boston are sent to Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley, who has seen allegations of child abuse more than double in January to February from the same period last year, said Conley’s spokesman, Jake Wark.
Some parents are arrested and prosecuted, and their children put in the care of relatives or foster families. But overwhelmed and underfunded agencies are not able to keep pace with the rise.
“We’re getting swamped,” said Robert Sage, director at the Boston Medical Center’s Child Protection Team, which treated 500 children with injuries consistent with abuse last year. That rate rose 30 percent in the first two months of this year.
“It’s pretty much everything. A lot of physical abuse. Some neglect,” he said.
Many state agencies and hospital are grappling with the increases while facing budget cuts. In Massachusetts, for example, the Department of Children and Families in charge of protecting children from abuse expects to see its budget cut by US$25 million in fiscal 2010.
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