Description

This report of a three-year study called for greater efforts to be made to ensure the protection of children in residential mental hygiene facilities who surface as "repeat" alleged victims in child abuse and neglect reports to the State Central Register. At the same time, the Commission noted that, contrary to the common images of battered children, sadistic abuse or gross neglect of basic needs that the terms "child abuse and neglect" conjure up, in over two-thirds of the reports filed there was no reported physical injury to the child, and in another 25 percent of the cases the injury was treated with first aid. Six percent of the cases involved more serious injury and two cases involved cases involved the death of a child.