Child Abuse: Search for Remedies

Concern Over Child Abuse in the Home

Humanitarian concern over the most abhorrent of all forms of violence—physical brutality toward children—has taken on a new dimension with emergence of a medical concept known as “the battered child syndrome.” Doctors coined the phrase to describe newly recognized cases of children, usually very young children, suffering from the effects of repeated and severe physical chastisement. Many of these children have been crippled or have later died as a result of inhuman treatment. And the offenders usually have been the parents or guardians of the children.

As awareness of the extent of such abuses has widened, state after state has enacted laws requiring doctors to report cases of child injury that may have been caused by assault. It is ...