it just seems like for the past month, CNN has had another story about a parent either beating, torturing or just outright murdering his or her (usually her) child. what's going on here?

nah, it's just that kids can't keep their mouths shut these days

i would say no. there never were any good ol' days. maybe cnn is attempting to capture the last stronghold of local news.

there is a lot of child abuse - has been, will continue to be. probably just a little less war news so this is what they put on instead.

I agree with the above... I don't think there's more child abuse these days, but I do think that there is a culture where kids aren't afraid to tell anymore. Or at the very least, hospital staff, social workers, etc. are clueing in on it faster and reacting in a timely manner.

The only thing is-- you know there's got to be more of it going on than what they report on CNN.

it could also be that child abuse was a lot more acceptable/practiced way back when. Just like there's a lot more coverage of "torture" nowadays because for centuries it was considered a pretty standard method of interrogation. Also, the definition has changed drastically (in both cases) over the years. I'm pretty sure the ol' Switch would be considered unconstitutional these days. Remember when schools were allowed to beat kids? That stopped less than 20 years ago

it just seems to me like there used to be a story on it once every two weeks but since two weeks ago or so there's been a new headline every day about a kid getting beaten with a shovel until she died from it. it's probably a matter of perception, although i'm not sure that any of us has any empirical evidence on this save for a growing sense of general misanthropy, but it's creeping me out.

maybe just more red-headed stepchildren

Its like the shark attack phenomenon of a couple summers ago. There aren't more cases of child abuse, just more news reports of child abuse.

I work in a children's protective services office, so I pretty much hear about every child abuse report in our small county... I'm the lucky one who gets to print all the digital pictures from investigations, to ensure that bruises and scars are documented well for court proceedings. Until I started working here I didn't have a clue how many of these things happen - and these are only the ones that get reported.

Surprisingly, about half the reports of abuse or neglect are just ex-spouses sniping at one another. Very seldom are these reports actual abuse or neglect - We had one woman call in because her ex-husband refused to cut the crusts of their kid's PB&J.

Unfortunatly, the other reports are all too commonly pretty nasty. Since I've been working ther we've never had anything as bad as what's been reported in the news lately. But what we do have in our county is more than enough to bear.

I think dana is right, though, that kids are less afraid to report abuse nowadays than they used to be. And cotton is correct in saying that it was more acceptable years ago... even some of the investigators in our office admit that when they were children their parents beat them, but it was "just the way things were then." They have to go out into the community and explain to parents why they're taking away their kids and pressing charges for things that used to be ignored. I can understand why they would want to do the job they're doing, although I would never want it, and even my small interaction with this stuff leaves me angry and disgusted. If I had to do their job I'd want to shoot every abusive parent I met.

a lot of these type of investigations are also eased by the continuing erosion of 4th amendment privacy protections - maybe a good thing in this case, maybe not so good in drug cases.

I think that children are less afraid to report child abouse due to the PSA announcements starring one man: Karl Malone. They were all over the place when I was a kid, and they're still shown today (despite the fact he's still wearing his Utah Jazz uni)...


"I Wish I Had Wings, So I Could Fly Far, Far Away From Here..."

Maybe Nazr should update that PSA and save hundreds of thousands more children from abuse.