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Copyrighted and posted by permission of Jenna Bernier at Massachusetts Citizens for Children. Originally posted at https://masskids.org/cta/cta_vi_ch18.html
Research suggests that abused and neglected children become society’s most disabled, dysfunctional and dependent individuals. Increasingly, child maltreatment appears to be the common denominator underlying our most serious social problems – from delinquency and runaway behavior in adolescents, to the violence and sexual crimes of adults. For many families, child maltreatment and family violence become patterns of behavior that are repeated in each new generation. The financial costs to our society to treat, harbor, prosecute, and incarcerate these victims is growing each year. The cost to our children and future generations is far greater when we measure the loss in human potential, productivity, and well-being.
Links between Abuse/Neglect and Juvenile Delinquency
A recent report by the Massachusetts-based Citizens for Juvenile Justice documents that children known to the Department of Social Services are at very high risk of becoming the future population of troubled youth served by the State’s Department of Youth Services (DYS). It is a sobering fact that over 50 percent of juvenile offenders served by DYS have previously been abused or neglected children under the care of DSS. [273] Consistent with the increase in abuse and neglect in Massachusetts over the past decade, the DYS population has increased nearly 100 percent since 1992.[274]
Increase in the numbers of troubled youth and their previous status as DSS clients makes it clear that our state is failing to provide the high quality and consistent care, treatment, and other services required to effectively address the needs of many of these traumatized children.
Overwhelming numbers of adolescent runaways, teens involved in delinquent acts or violent behaviors, and adult criminal and sexual offenders report childhood histories of physical battering, emotional abuse and sexual exploitation. Researchers have used interviews, case file analysis and reviews of court and protective services records to determine the prevalence of maltreatment in the lives of incarcerated adolescents. Results consistently reveal a history of recurring and often severe maltreatment in the childhood of delinquent teens.[275]
A 1998 Boston University study concludes that children who are abused and neglected are 1.8 times more likely to be arrested as juveniles, and 1.5 times more likely to be arrested as adults, than children who have not been exposed to abuse or neglect.[276] This is an alarming trend, as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts predicts a 24 percent increase in the adolescent population between 1995 and 2005.[277]
Without intervention to stop the trend of juvenile incarceration, we will continue on the path of building more prisons for our abused/neglected children and the adults they will become rather than investing in prevention and treatment options that would improve their opportunities for success.[278] As Margaret Mead has stated aptly: “The solution of adult problems tomorrow depends in large measure upon the way our children grow up today. There is no greater insight into the future than recognizing when we save our children we save ourselves.”
Links between Child Abuse and Adult Disease
Previous studies show that abused children, if untreated, can grow up to suffer behavioral and emotional difficulties. To compound these problems, new research documents that overall, abused children grow up to suffer from comparatively very poor health as well. Thirty percent (30%) of abused children in one study were found to have chronic health problems.[279]
Childhood sexual abuse, if untreated, can also have ramifications that affect the child physically later in life. For example, women who were sexually abused in childhood are more likely to suffer from gastrointestinal and/or neurological problems. They utilize health services at a rate three to ten times more than women who have not suffered such abuse.[280]
Numerous clinical studies also show that a disproportionately large number of women with alcohol problems report they had been sexually or physically abused during childhood. The research varies in identifying the reasons for this link, but several studies hypothesize that isolation, grief, or anxiety resulting from the trauma of their abuse or neglect may be responsible.[281]
The established relationship described earlier between multiple risk factors for adult heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease and liver disease, and the extent of childhood exposure to emotional, physical, sexual abuse and household dysfunction is yet another example of the persistent impact of this public health problem.
Links between Child Abuse/Neglect and Welfare Dependency
Although child sexual abuse does not only happen to poor children, as would be expected, the rate is higher among children living in dangerous neighborhoods or with adults who abuse drugs and alcohol. In turn, sexually abused children are more likely to have issues that could lead them to dependency on welfare. For example, a sexually abused girl is more likely to become a teenage mother or to drop out of school than a teenager who is not sexually abused. Growing evidence shows that a disproportionately large number of women on welfare were sexually abused as children.
Fiscal Costs to our Nation
The human and social costs of abuse translate into staggering fiscal costs for society. After the abuse has occurred, we pay for emergency medical care, investigation, and foster placement of child victims, therapeutic, rehabilitative and special education services. In the long term, the costs for crisis and emergency shelters, juvenile detention, adult institutionalization and incarceration are added to the bill, along with health care costs associated with major adult diseases related to abuse and trauma exposure in childhood.
For example, recent data indicates that medical costs alone can exceed $1 million dollars for the first years after a Shaken Baby Syndrome injury. Many of these SBS victims require ongoing medical, physician, and educational therapy, and a significant proportion will be completely dependent upon others for lifelong custodial care. Unpublished data from the Western New York Shaken Baby Education Project indicate that the medical costs for 64 percent of SBS victims are borne by the State of New York under Medicaid and other state-sponsored programs.[285]
Each year, the United States spends approximately $30 billion dollars on services for abused children, their families, and foster care families.[286] The American Humane Society and Prevent Child Abuse America conducted a study in 1994 to estimate the costs of child abuse and neglect.[287] The study reported that for victims of abuse the cost per family for counseling was $2,860 per year; annual costs were estimated at over $800 million dollars for the only one in five victims nationally who it was estimated actually receive counseling services.[288] Other estimated costs totaling nearly $8.5 billion for one year alone included:
These figure do not include costs associated with investigations, family supervision by child protective services, or long-term impairment, such as loss of future earnings, drug and alcohol treatment, juvenile court proceedings, substance abuse counseling, special education and other cost that are directly related to the abuse and neglect of children.[289]
A second study, conducted by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in 1996[290] was the result of a two-year effort among various disciplines to measure the costs and consequences of crimes against persons in America. The study considered both direct costs of victimization, such as medical expenses, lost earnings, and public programs for victims. It also examined the indirect costs of crime, such as pain and suffering and the diminished quality of life faced by crime victims. Total direct and indirect costs of violent crime amounted to $426 billion dollars. Violence against children accounted for $56 billion dollars, or 20 percent of the direct costs, and 35 percent of the combined direct and indirect costs of crime. The breakdown of costs was as follows:
In order to reduce these staggering human and fiscal costs, an unparalleled commitment must be made to ensure effective treatment services for abused/neglected children and their families as soon as they are identified. It must be matched, however, with a parallel commitment to strengthen our current state systems charged with the care and protection of these children. The “third leg of the stool,” without which the other two will fall, is the commitment to significantly expand family support and prevention programs that can keep families from failing and children from being damaged in the first place.
These three must not be viewed as separate and competing propositions. They are inextricably bound to each other and are fundamentally tied to our success in ending the unjust and unnecessary abuse of our children’s bodies, spirits and hopes.