---

---

---

---

Science Current Events and Science News RSS Feeds

---

---

Email a Friend Printer Friendly

Estimates of child abuse in sudden infant death may have been too high

July 18, 2003

Estimates of suspected child abuse in cases of sudden unexpected death in infancy may have been too high, suggests research in Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Previous studies have variously put the risk of abuse at between 20% and 40%, and in families with more than one sudden death in infancy, as high as 55%.

But a new study in north eastern England of all families unexpectedly losing an infant between 1982 and 1996 suggests the figures could be much lower.

The circumstances in which 69 families unexpectedly lost an infant during this period were investigated thoroughly, and the wellbeing of subsequent siblings was tracked up to the end of 2000. Any court judgements, social services intervention, and decisions to put a child on the Child Protection Register were all noted.

These families unexpectedly lost a total of 72 children. There were two deaths in three families, with deliberate intent suspected in two families. In both cases, these were the second children to die, and there had been reports of an alleged apparent life threatening episode (ATLE) in the early months, a factor associated with abuse.

In three other families, siblings were put on the Protection Register at the time of the death. Sixty four of the families already had 63 children between them, and among the 60 families monitored up to the end of 2000, 93 more children were born without evidence of abuse.

Based on these figures, the authors calculate that the risk of abuse in cases of sudden unexpected death in infancy is lower than previous estimates, and is between 3 and 10%. The need to place a child on the Child Protection Register is rare, they say.

An ATLE in a second child after the unexpected death of a first child must generate a full police and Social Services child protection investigation, urge the authors. But they conclude that previous estimates of the risk “may have been too high, adding: “there is no evidence to suggest that the fall in the overall SIDS rate [as a result of the Back to Sleep Campaign] has increased the relative proportion of the minority who have allegedly been maltreated.”

British Medical Journal (BMJ)