Fatal child violence staggering

A STUDY has found the country is ill-equipped to handle reports relating to violence against children.

The study, published in the South African Medical Journal, titled “Developing an understanding of fatal child abuse and neglect: Results from the South African child death review pilot study”, noted violence against children was a serious problem in South Africa.

However, most worrying was that there were no data sources to monitor the scale of the problem.

“The poor detection rates of child abuse deaths are primarily owing to difficulties in identifying such deaths, investigating and reporting of such deaths by police to child protection services, and a lack of standard definitions of child maltreatment.

“Deaths caused by violence or severe physical abuse are more likely recognised as child abuse deaths, while deaths related to neglect/omission of care – including abandonment or those resulting in drowning, poisoning and fire injury – are more likely to remain undetected,” the study found.

The study looked at 707 cases from Salt River mortuary in the Western Cape and Phoenix mortuary in KwaZuluNatal.

It found that 60.4% of girls died from child abuse compared to 33.3% of boys, and also that neglectrelated deaths were more common among boys at 60.1% than girls 39.4%.

More disconcerting was that 60.4% of child abuserelated deaths happened in the one-year age group, and neglect-related deaths were most common in the age group at 60.1%, followed by the one-to four-year age group at 27.7%.

The study revealed child abuse deaths at 40.4% and neglect-related deaths at 72.2% were more likely to happen at children’s homes.

It also found abandonment at birth was the most common cause of abuse and neglect-related deaths at 37.5%, followed by blunt force injury at 14.6% and strangulation/asphyxiation death at 14.6%.

University of Pretoria Centre for Child Law director Professor Ann Skelton said the study showed there was a need for in-depth investigation into child deaths.

She said the deaths were often reported as being from accidental causes when there was actually something else at play.

“So the first thing is that we are not identifying cases early enough and trying to make sure that children are protected.

“And also it may mean that even if social services are aware of the cases the system is overloaded and they may not be able to provide the kind of support that family needs,” Skelton said.

“So it causes us to say that we really need to reflect on how is a child protection system working for children, what are the problems and what can be done about it.”

She said communities might know that a child is being abused or neglected, but they might not know how to report such cases.

“60.4% of child abuse-related deaths happened in the one-year age group