Florida third nationwide in child abuse and neglect deaths

November 9, 4:15 PMTampa Crime ExaminerCharisse Van Horn

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A scathing report released last week shows that Florida ranks third in the nation for child deaths related to abuse and neglect. Florida was third, as Texas was first followed by California. The report was compiled by Every Child matters Education fund and is titled “We can do Better: Child Abuse and Neglect deaths in the U.S.” The report begins by stating, “Each year our country fails to protect thousands of children in desperate circumstances, circumstances which sadly end only with their deaths.”

The report was compiled between the years 2001 and 2007 and shows that in 2007, 153 children died in the state of Florida due to child abuse and neglect. It is estimated, that though the figures are high and Florida is one of the leading states of child abuse death in the nation, the figures in the report are much lower than they truly are. Underreporting of child deaths and the undercounting of deaths associated with maltreatment may make the true figures significantly higher, the report says. Federal statistics say that throughout the nation, between the years 2001 and 2007, 10,440 children died due to child abuse and neglect.

The definition of maltreatment deaths according to the Herman-Giddens, M. E., Brown, G., Verbiest, S., et al. (1999) is as follows.

Fatal child abuse may involve repeated abuse over a period of time (e.g., battered child syndrome), or it may involve a single, impulsive incident (e.g., drowning, suffocating, or shaking a baby). In cases of fatal neglect, the child’s death results not from anything the caregiver does, but from a caregiver’s failure to act. The neglect may be chronic (e.g., extended malnourishment) or acute (e.g., an infant who drowns after being left unsupervised in the bathtub).

Other statistics in Florida show that there are 4,067,877 children under the age of 18 and in 2007, 678,038 of those were living in poverty. In 2007, 785,000 children were not covered by any health insurance and 1,094,000 were covered by government provided health care. In the year 2005, there were 148,000 reports of child abuse and from the years 2000-2005 there were 557 children who died due to child abuse and neglect.

You may read the "Every Child Matters" report here.