thedrifter
07-31-07, 07:18 PM
In Army enlisted families with at least one incident of child abuse, the children are far more likely to be abused during deployments, researchers have found.
And the type of abuse is likely to be child neglect at the hands of their mothers, according to a study to be published in the Aug. 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association by researchers at RTI International and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health.
The study looked at Army families with at least one substantiated report of child abuse and had at least one combat-related deployment during the 40-month period between September 2001 and December 2004. Within those families, the rate of child abuse during soldier deployments was 42 percent higher than when the soldier was not deployed.
Only enlisted families are represented in the study; the data included only 49 officer families, too small a sample to analyze, the researchers stated. For the same reasons, they excluded 156 families in which the soldier was not married to the civilian parent, and nine families in which both husband and wife were soldiers. Thus, out of 1,985 families who met the initial criteria, 1,771 families were included in the study.
“The greatest increase we see during deployments is the increase in child neglect,” which is a category of child abuse, said Deborah Gibbs, a senior health analyst at RTI and the study’s lead author. The study was funded by the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.
The civilian mother committed child abuse during the time the soldier-husband was deployed at a rate three times greater than when he was not deployed. The rate of child neglect was four times greater. Rates of child abuse for male civilian parents were not greater, researchers noted, suggesting that the two groups may be different in terms of the stress they experience, or how they mobilize resources to help them during deployments.
There may be several reasons for the increase in child neglect among civilian mothers, Gibbs said. “Maybe male parents are more likely to commit child physical abuse. Or, one of the ways the civilian parent left at home responds is by getting overwhelmed with the situation, and may not be keeping up with the child’s needs or supervising the child.”
She said the Army is also more stringent in its regulations about child abuse than civilian communities, “to the credit of the Army. They take seriously leaving a child alone in an apartment, or alone in a parked car at a convenience store.”
It’s understandable that young mothers with young children may find it difficult to manage when the soldier leaves, she said, “which is not to say this is trivial. It’s clear there’s a need for preventive and supportive services.”
Gibbs said she has been on several different installations and has talked about her findings with those who deal with child abuse. “They were not surprised. They are aware of this. They are working hard on it, but their resources are stretched thin. There is also the likelihood that those most in need are not going to seek the services.”
Army officials did not immediately comment on whether they are taking any actions as a result of the research. But officials have taken a variety of steps over the last few years, including increasing the availability of child care at deployed bases, implementing a 24-hour information and referral service through Military OneSource in addition to help available at Army Community Service centers, and adding more personnel to support families in deployed units.
Nevertheless, researchers concluded, there is a need for still more support; at-risk parents need more services that they will be likely to seek out and accept.
Gibbs cautioned that this study does not prove that deployments cause child abuse, nor does anyone know this. “It’s important to recognize that the large majority of families who are deployed do not experience child abuse,” she said. “But in this relatively small group, the rates are much higher during deployment. Within every population there are those who are vulnerable, and this kind of added stress will hit them hard.”
This research does not compare the entire Army population of soldiers who have deployed to determine what percentage had child abuse in the family.
“Because researchers really limited their sample, they can’t draw a comparative analysis” about the effects of deployments, said Christine Hansen, director of the Miles Foundation, which provides advocacy and support services for victims of violence in the military community. “They can only make conclusions based on this sample.”
The researchers noted that their restricted comparison does not allow them to estimate the risk of child abuse during combat-related deployments for all Army families.
Ed McCarroll, director of the family violence and trauma project for the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine, said this study is consistent with findings of two other recent studies, including his research, which shows that the rates of child neglect in Army families increased sharply between 2001 and 2004, reversing a decade-long downward trend.
His research does not link the incidents of child neglect to deployments, nor does other research conducted in Texas on military families indicating a rise in child abuse generally in military families with the threat of deployment. McCarroll’s research on child neglect is in the process of being published, and is not available until publication, he said.
According to statistics he provided, the rate of substantiated cases of child abuse cases gradually rose from 2001, when there were 5.2 incidents per 1,000 children, until 2004, when the rate hit 6.2 cases per 1,000. But since then, the rate of substantiated incidents has been dropping, to 4.9 per 1,000 in 2006.
Overall Defense Department rates of child abuse show a gradual decrease between 2001 and 2003, then an upward blip in 2004, when it reached seven substantiated cases per 1,000 population. The Marine Corps and the Air Force statistics each show an upward blip in child abuse in 2004, but the Navy does not. All the services report a decrease in substantiated child abuse cases since 2001 — with the Marine Corps’ cases dropping by more than half, from 8.05 per 1,000 population to 3.95.
Gibbs said she would like to do a study on Marine Corps incidents of child abuse, as well as National Guard and Reserve families, which were not included in this research. It would be more challenging to get the data, she noted, “but on so many more levels there are more reasons to be concerned,” she said. “It’s entirely possible that Reserve and Guard families experience at least as much stress, without access to services that active-duty families have.”
About 71 percent of the incidents of child abuse reviewed in the study involved children between the ages of 2 and 12 — whether the abuse happened during deployment or when the soldier was home.
Evidence indicates that when females are the perpetrator of child abuse, it is usually in the form of child neglect, Hansen said. Mothers may have inadequate finances to take care of the children because the service member may not be providing them with enough money. And they may be less able to deal with a child who is acting out when the father is deployed, she said.
“Child neglect speaks to the role of the military and what they are doing to support the family,” Hansen said. Based on contacts with her office, she said, the number of cases of domestic violence is increasing along with child abuse.
Researchers used data from the confidential Army Central Registry to identify families with at least one incident of child abuse in the 40 months between September 2001 and December 2004. They matched that with Army human resources data to determine whether they had at least one combat deployment during that time period. In the 1,771 families, 1,858 parents committed child abuse; in some cases more than one parent abused the children. Some 3,334 child abuse incidents against 2,968 individual children were logged during the study period.
While there were more actual incidents of child abuse while the soldier was home — 2,392 incidents versus 942 when the soldier was deployed — the researchers made their calculations that the risk was higher on deployment based on the number of days of deployment or non-deployment periods that the child was at risk.
During deployments, the rate of physical abuse by the mother was twice as high as it was when the soldier was home. Yet the rates of physical abuse of children were still significantly lower during deployments than when the soldier was home.
During deployments, about 81 percent of the incidents analyzed were neglect, and about 10 percent were physical abuse. The rate of child abuse during deployment was greater for offenders who were white than for those who were black or Hispanic.
When the soldier was home, about 19 percent of incidents were physical abuse, and 59 percent were neglect.
The soldier committed about 59 percent of the incidents during periods of time at home. About 11 percent of the incidents during deployment were committed by soldiers who were home on leave.
Researchers did not analyze the types of abuse committed by soldiers when they were home.
Ellie
And the type of abuse is likely to be child neglect at the hands of their mothers, according to a study to be published in the Aug. 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association by researchers at RTI International and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health.
The study looked at Army families with at least one substantiated report of child abuse and had at least one combat-related deployment during the 40-month period between September 2001 and December 2004. Within those families, the rate of child abuse during soldier deployments was 42 percent higher than when the soldier was not deployed.
Only enlisted families are represented in the study; the data included only 49 officer families, too small a sample to analyze, the researchers stated. For the same reasons, they excluded 156 families in which the soldier was not married to the civilian parent, and nine families in which both husband and wife were soldiers. Thus, out of 1,985 families who met the initial criteria, 1,771 families were included in the study.
“The greatest increase we see during deployments is the increase in child neglect,” which is a category of child abuse, said Deborah Gibbs, a senior health analyst at RTI and the study’s lead author. The study was funded by the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.
The civilian mother committed child abuse during the time the soldier-husband was deployed at a rate three times greater than when he was not deployed. The rate of child neglect was four times greater. Rates of child abuse for male civilian parents were not greater, researchers noted, suggesting that the two groups may be different in terms of the stress they experience, or how they mobilize resources to help them during deployments.
There may be several reasons for the increase in child neglect among civilian mothers, Gibbs said. “Maybe male parents are more likely to commit child physical abuse. Or, one of the ways the civilian parent left at home responds is by getting overwhelmed with the situation, and may not be keeping up with the child’s needs or supervising the child.”
She said the Army is also more stringent in its regulations about child abuse than civilian communities, “to the credit of the Army. They take seriously leaving a child alone in an apartment, or alone in a parked car at a convenience store.”
It’s understandable that young mothers with young children may find it difficult to manage when the soldier leaves, she said, “which is not to say this is trivial. It’s clear there’s a need for preventive and supportive services.”
Gibbs said she has been on several different installations and has talked about her findings with those who deal with child abuse. “They were not surprised. They are aware of this. They are working hard on it, but their resources are stretched thin. There is also the likelihood that those most in need are not going to seek the services.”
Army officials did not immediately comment on whether they are taking any actions as a result of the research. But officials have taken a variety of steps over the last few years, including increasing the availability of child care at deployed bases, implementing a 24-hour information and referral service through Military OneSource in addition to help available at Army Community Service centers, and adding more personnel to support families in deployed units.
Nevertheless, researchers concluded, there is a need for still more support; at-risk parents need more services that they will be likely to seek out and accept.
Gibbs cautioned that this study does not prove that deployments cause child abuse, nor does anyone know this. “It’s important to recognize that the large majority of families who are deployed do not experience child abuse,” she said. “But in this relatively small group, the rates are much higher during deployment. Within every population there are those who are vulnerable, and this kind of added stress will hit them hard.”
This research does not compare the entire Army population of soldiers who have deployed to determine what percentage had child abuse in the family.
“Because researchers really limited their sample, they can’t draw a comparative analysis” about the effects of deployments, said Christine Hansen, director of the Miles Foundation, which provides advocacy and support services for victims of violence in the military community. “They can only make conclusions based on this sample.”
The researchers noted that their restricted comparison does not allow them to estimate the risk of child abuse during combat-related deployments for all Army families.
Ed McCarroll, director of the family violence and trauma project for the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine, said this study is consistent with findings of two other recent studies, including his research, which shows that the rates of child neglect in Army families increased sharply between 2001 and 2004, reversing a decade-long downward trend.
His research does not link the incidents of child neglect to deployments, nor does other research conducted in Texas on military families indicating a rise in child abuse generally in military families with the threat of deployment. McCarroll’s research on child neglect is in the process of being published, and is not available until publication, he said.
According to statistics he provided, the rate of substantiated cases of child abuse cases gradually rose from 2001, when there were 5.2 incidents per 1,000 children, until 2004, when the rate hit 6.2 cases per 1,000. But since then, the rate of substantiated incidents has been dropping, to 4.9 per 1,000 in 2006.
Overall Defense Department rates of child abuse show a gradual decrease between 2001 and 2003, then an upward blip in 2004, when it reached seven substantiated cases per 1,000 population. The Marine Corps and the Air Force statistics each show an upward blip in child abuse in 2004, but the Navy does not. All the services report a decrease in substantiated child abuse cases since 2001 — with the Marine Corps’ cases dropping by more than half, from 8.05 per 1,000 population to 3.95.
Gibbs said she would like to do a study on Marine Corps incidents of child abuse, as well as National Guard and Reserve families, which were not included in this research. It would be more challenging to get the data, she noted, “but on so many more levels there are more reasons to be concerned,” she said. “It’s entirely possible that Reserve and Guard families experience at least as much stress, without access to services that active-duty families have.”
About 71 percent of the incidents of child abuse reviewed in the study involved children between the ages of 2 and 12 — whether the abuse happened during deployment or when the soldier was home.
Evidence indicates that when females are the perpetrator of child abuse, it is usually in the form of child neglect, Hansen said. Mothers may have inadequate finances to take care of the children because the service member may not be providing them with enough money. And they may be less able to deal with a child who is acting out when the father is deployed, she said.
“Child neglect speaks to the role of the military and what they are doing to support the family,” Hansen said. Based on contacts with her office, she said, the number of cases of domestic violence is increasing along with child abuse.
Researchers used data from the confidential Army Central Registry to identify families with at least one incident of child abuse in the 40 months between September 2001 and December 2004. They matched that with Army human resources data to determine whether they had at least one combat deployment during that time period. In the 1,771 families, 1,858 parents committed child abuse; in some cases more than one parent abused the children. Some 3,334 child abuse incidents against 2,968 individual children were logged during the study period.
While there were more actual incidents of child abuse while the soldier was home — 2,392 incidents versus 942 when the soldier was deployed — the researchers made their calculations that the risk was higher on deployment based on the number of days of deployment or non-deployment periods that the child was at risk.
During deployments, the rate of physical abuse by the mother was twice as high as it was when the soldier was home. Yet the rates of physical abuse of children were still significantly lower during deployments than when the soldier was home.
During deployments, about 81 percent of the incidents analyzed were neglect, and about 10 percent were physical abuse. The rate of child abuse during deployment was greater for offenders who were white than for those who were black or Hispanic.
When the soldier was home, about 19 percent of incidents were physical abuse, and 59 percent were neglect.
The soldier committed about 59 percent of the incidents during periods of time at home. About 11 percent of the incidents during deployment were committed by soldiers who were home on leave.
Researchers did not analyze the types of abuse committed by soldiers when they were home.
Ellie