Child abuse & neglect
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Some of the most highly publicized child sexual abuse trials of this century have involved bizarre allegations of satanic ritual abuse, yet little is known about jurors' reactions to ritual abuse claims. We investigated how jurors' judgements of defendant guilt and witness credibility are affected by the presence or absence of satanic ritual abuse allegations. ⋯ Our findings suggest that highly bizarre details may be discounted by jurors (particularly less religious jurors), but that jurors may set aside their skepticism of satanic ritual details and make judgments about child sexual abuse cases based on their perceptions of the credibility of nonsatanic allegations of harm. Whether or not this is an accurate approach to decision-making in these cases remains an empirical question.
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To compare the cases of child abuse (CA) with other admissions in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) for differences in patient-specific health care costs, severity of illness (SI) and mortality, and describe their outcome. ⋯ These results confirm that interventional medical care in response to severe CA is very costly and the ultimate outcome is significantly worse than other diseases. Therefore, we believe it is imperative to allocate resources to prevention.
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Child abuse & neglect · Jul 1997
Social support in child abuse and neglect: support functions, sources, and contexts.
The objective of the present paper was to examine the social support functions, sources and temporal contexts of Argentinian mothers in relation to child abuse and neglect. ⋯ Comparisons between both groups of mothers indicated that only some specific support indexes distinguished mothers with low and high abuse/neglect. Specifically, kin and instrumental support indexes were associated with child abuse/neglect, whereas nonkin and psychological support variables were not.
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This study examined factors associated with clinicians' concerns about abuse and neglect and reporting hospitalized children to Child Protective Services (CPS). Data came from a cross-sectional chart review from a random sample of pediatric hospitalizations 1988-1990 in three cities for five condition groups (n = 5,446), and included evidence of clinicians' concerns about physical abuse or neglect and reports to CPS, family income, ethnicity, family structure, child's age, and illness severity at admission. Concerns about abuse were noted in 2.5% of the total sample, concerns about neglect in 3.1%, and 2.9% of children were reported to CPS. ⋯ Severity of illness was associated with concerns about physical abuse (p = .02) among children with head trauma, and with concerns about neglect and frequency of reporting among children with meningitis (p < .01). Our results confirm the associations among neglect, poverty, and single-parent families among hospitalized children. Increasing severity of illness may make clinicians consciously or unconsciously consider that care has been delayed and the child neglected.