Child abuse and neglect cost US $124 billion, Scouts Canada, school staff replaced

articles:
- Child abuse and neglect cost the United States $124 billion
- The economic burden of child maltreatment in the United States and implications for prevention
- Study: Child abuse bigger threat than SIDS
- Convicted leader continued with Scouts movement
- Entire staff to be replaced at LA school where 2 teachers were arrested

Child abuse and neglect cost the United States $124 billion
Rivals cost of other high profile public health problems

Press Release
For Immediate Release: February 1, 2012
Contact :CDC Division of News and Electronic Media

The total lifetime estimated financial costs associated with just one year of confirmed cases of child maltreatment (physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse and neglect) is approximately $124 billion, according to a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in Child Abuse and Neglect, The International Journal.

This study looked at confirmed child maltreatment cases, 1,740 fatal and 579,000 non–fatal, for a 12–month period. The lifetime cost for each victim of child maltreatment who lived was $210,012, which is comparable to other costly health conditions, such as stroke with a lifetime cost per person estimated at $159,846 or type 2 diabetes, which is estimated between $181,000 and $253,000.  The costs of each death due to child maltreatment are even higher….

Child maltreatment has been shown to have many negative effects on survivors, including poorer health, social and emotional difficulties, and decreased economic productivity.  This CDC study found these negative effects over a survivor’s lifetime generate many costs that impact the nation’s health care, education, criminal justice and welfare systems.

Key findings:

The estimated average lifetime cost per victim of nonfatal child maltreatment includes:
$32,648 in childhood health care costs
$10,530 in adult medical costs
$144,360 in productivity losses
$7,728 in child welfare costs
$6,747 in criminal justice costs
$7,999 in special education costs

….Child maltreatment can also be linked to many emotional, behavioral, and physical health problems. Associated emotional and behavioral problems include aggression, conduct disorder, delinquency, antisocial behavior, substance abuse, intimate partner violence, teenage pregnancy, anxiety, depression, and suicide. http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2012/p0201_child_abuse.html

The economic burden of child maltreatment in the United States and implications for prevention     Xiangming Fanga, Derek S. Brownb,
Curtis S. Florencea, James A. Mercya

Results

The estimated average lifetime cost per victim of nonfatal child maltreatment is $210,012 in 2010 dollars, including $32,648 in childhood health care costs; $10,530 in adult medical costs; $144,360 in productivity losses; $7,728 in child welfare costs; $6,747 in criminal justice costs; and $7,999 in special education costs. The estimated average lifetime cost per death is $1,272,900, including $14,100 in medical costs and $1,258,800 in productivity losses. The total lifetime economic burden resulting from new cases of fatal and nonfatal child maltreatment in the United States in 2008 is approximately $124 billion. In sensitivity analysis, the total burden is estimated to be as large as $585 billion.
Conclusions

Compared with other health problems, the burden of child maltreatment is substantial, indicating the importance of prevention efforts to address the high prevalence of child maltreatment. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213411003140

Study: Child abuse bigger threat than SIDS
4,600 children hospitalized with serious injuries
By Frederik Joelving 2/6/2012

Nearly 4,600 U.S. children were hospitalized with broken bones, traumatic brain injury and other serious damage caused by physical abuse in 2006, according to a new report.

Babies younger than one were the most common victims, with 58 cases per 100,000 infants. That makes serious abuse a bigger threat to infant safety than SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome, researchers say in the report….

Based on data from the 2006 Kids’ Inpatient Database, the last such numbers available, Leventhal’s team found that six out of every 100,000 children under 18 were hospitalized with injuries ranging from burns to wounds to brain injuries and bone fractures. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46281207/ns/health-childrens_health

Convicted leader continued with Scouts movement
CBC 2/7/12 A man who was twice-convicted of sex offences against children was welcomed as a member of a Scouts alumni association for decades, even after officials became aware of at least one of his convictions, a CBC News investigation has found.

Even though the organization says there was no contact with youth, Scouts Canada, in a recent interview with the CBC, now admits it was a mistake.

But a Lillooet, B.C., family that suffered damage caused by the abuse, says the acknowledgement gives them little solace.

“I ended up doing nine prison sentences, and having drinking and drug and all those other problems,” Christopher Jones told CBC News.

Decades ago, in 1976, his Grade 4 teacher and Scout leader, Michael David Henley, began molesting him….

It took Jones, who was known as Christopher Aaron as a child, 10 years to tell anyone what Henley did to him….

Henley eventually pleaded guilty to indecent assault and received a year’s probation. In 1994, Moore wrote to Scouts officials to be certain they were aware of what happened.

Moore says the letter she got back made her sick. Henley was still involved in Scouting as part of an adult alumni group for leaders called the Baden Powell Guild. The provincial commissioner wrote that Henley had no direct contact with youth, was undergoing counselling, and appeared determined to stay clear of situations that could result in a recurrence of his crime.

After Henley was convicted of sex assaults against six boys in 1999, he stepped down from his position as editor of the Baden Powell Guild’s newsletter, but returned as editor until 2005. http://ca.news.yahoo.com/convicted-leader-continued-scouts-movement-000842148.html

Entire staff to be replaced at LA school where 2 teachers were arrested
By msnbc.com staff and news services

2/7/12 The Los Angeles Unified School District is replacing the entire staff of Miramonte Elementary following the arrest of two teachers on lewd conduct charges last week, Superintendent John Deasy told parents at a meeting Monday night, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Positions will be filled by qualified teachers and other workers already on a placement or rehiring list, the Times report stated. But the displacement of the current staff could be temporary, according to the report.

Teacher Mark Berndt was charged last week with committing lewd acts on 23 children. Another teacher, Martin Springer, was arrested Friday on suspicion of fondling two girls in his classroom.

Deasy said staffers are being replaced because a full investigation of allegations is disruptive, and staffers require support to get through the scandal. http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/06/10332533-entire-staff-to-be-replaced-at-la-school-where-2-teachers-were-arrested

Sybil in Her Own Words, 400,000 US Girls Under Ten Are Sexually Assaulted

Sybil in Her Own Words by Patrick Suraci, Psychologist 12/15/11

….I recently published Sybil In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings. It is a follow-up to the case of a woman who had 16 personalities, then called Multiple Personality Disorder. Flora Schreiber wrote this story titled Sybil. The therapist, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur used unorthodox, but not unethical, treatment for ten years, such as, psychoanalysis, hypnosis and Sodium Pentothal which resulted in the complete integration of the 16 personalities.

Sybil was the pseudonym for Shirley Mason who was born on January 25, 1923, in Dodge Center, Minnesota. She was an artistically gifted and shy only child. Her family was well known in this little town; therefore, her mother’s bizarre behavior was overlooked. During Shirley’s treatment the alternate personalities emerged and told of the abuse by her mother. Whenever her mother committed an atrocious attack on Shirley, she would split and development another personality to cope with the trauma.

Attacking the veracity of Sybil published in 1973 did not begin until April 24,1997, when Dr. Herbert Spiegel gave an interview to the New York Review of Books. He stated that Sybil was not a multiple, but rather an hysteric. He claimed to have hypnotized her, performed regression studies and filmed her for the class he taught at Columbia University, thus, discovering that Sybil’s therapist, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, had been: “helping her (Sybil) identifying aspects of her life, or perspectives, that she then called by name. By naming them this way she was reifying a memory of some kind and converting it into a ‘personality’…” In fact, he accused Dr. Wilbur of implanting false memories….

When I asked Dr. Spiegel for the film hypnotizing Sybil, he said he could not find it. When asked why he had waited 24 years to report this so-called fraudulent case, he said no one had ever asked him about Sybil….

After Ms. Nathan received many negative criticisms over her inaccuracies and fabrications in Sybil Exposed, a fact checker from the Times claimed she had verified the documents in the Schreiber archives in the Special Collections Library at John Jay College. The sign-in book, which is meticulously guarded, requires a person’s signature and date. There is no such entry from this fact checker.

While researching my book, Shirley’s cousin Naomi Rhode, found an audio cassette made by Shirley and Dr. Wilbur on February 18, 1977.They were discussion publishing a book about Sybil’s paintings. They spoke about the time Dr. Wilbur sent Shirley to Dr. Spiegel. Dr, Wilbur says, “I think that hysterics are people who are willing to enter into a contract with someone whom they trust.

Now if they don’t trust that individual to some extent, they may appear to enter into a contract, but they don’t really. And as an example of that, I would like to point out that, although Sybil was very readily hypnotizable by me…An expert used her as a demonstration subject, and she agreed to this and he was disagreeable to her.

As a consequence he could not really hypnotize her” Shirley added, “She (Sybil) didn’t trust him as much. He tried to make her make something special out of things in her life that weren’t special, like birthdays…”.

….Shirley gave me information, journals, art work, anything I wanted to make my book an accurate picture of her life. She wanted people to know the benefits of therapy and that she was cured and lived a productive life….http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patrick-suraci/post_2699_b_1152241.html

Patrick Suraci received his Ph.D. in psychology from the New School for Social Research. He taught at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Baruch College, City University of New York. He worked as a staff psychologist for the New York Police Department and is now in private practice in Manhattan. His first book was Male Sexual Armor: Erotic Fantasies and Sexual Realities of the Cop on the Beat and the Man in the Street and recently published SYBIL in her own words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patrick-suraci/

400,666 US Girls Under Ten Are Forcibly Raped
By James R. Marsh on December 15, 2011

A recently released report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals some sobering numbers: nearly 1 in 5 women have been raped in their lifetime. This statistic is widely known and almost universally accepted. But what do these numbers say about children?

According to the study, approximately 80% of female victims experienced their first rape before the age of 25 and almost half experienced the first rape before age 18 (30% between 11-17 years old and 12% at or before the age of 10).

When you crunch the numbers even more, you discover that approximately 400,666 girls under ten have experienced “completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration.”http://www.childlaw.us/2011/12/400666-girls-under-ten-forcibl.html

Center for Disease Control and Prevention
The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS)

On average, 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States, based on a survey conducted in 2010. Over the course of a year, that equals more than 12 million women and men.

Those numbers only tell part of the story—more than 1 million women are raped in a year and over 6 million women and men are victims of stalking in a year. These findings emphasize that sexual violence, stalking, and intimate partner violence are important and widespread public health problems in the United States. http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/