LYNN – Over the past two years, cases of child abuse and neglect have risen by 13 percent in Lynn, far out-pacing most communities in the U.S. Perhaps more disturbing is a forecast that suggests the rate will continue to inch upward as the economy spirals down.
About 120 social and childcare workers, police officers, firefighters, schoolteachers and community service employees gathered Friday at the LynnArts gallery in Central Square to share stories, strategies, and sow the seeds of what may emerge as a local task force aimed at curbing the problem.Hosted jointly by Lynn Economic Opportunity (LEO) and the Lynn office of the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) ? formerly the Department of Social Services ? the meeting brought to the forefront the extent of child abuse and neglect in the Lynn area.Richard Powers, director of the local DCF office, said Massachusetts is second only to Florida nationwide in the rate of child abuse cases. Last year, 119,247 cases were reported in Massachusetts, or 13 more per day than in 2007. The trend, said powers, is evident: the younger the child, the more vulnerable. In 2006, 1,530 children died from child abuse in the U.S. and 79 percent of them were under age 4.Many of the reported cases involve young parents, often unmarried, who have had little training in how to handle the stress of raising children.”Seventy percent of shaken-baby cases are caused by young men,” said Powers, noting that cases of child abuse are increasing as the economy falters. As he put it, of the 22 cases that occurred in Massachusetts between March 2008 and March 2009 ? in which the child was critically injured ? the majority were reported during the first three months of this year. Those cases had injuries such as burns, broken bones, skull fractures or cerebral hemorrhages. During March 2008 there were 170 child abuse reports filed in Lynn. In March 2009, there were 202 cases.”That shows the influence of the economy,” said Powers, adding it is imperative that young men learn what it takes to be a father.Last year ? in the DCF district encompassing Lynn, Nahant, Saugus and Swampscott ? there were 2,060 reports of child abuse, of which 1,270 were investigated and 630 supported. Twenty children were adopted as a result.Powers, the lead speaker at the forum, said child abuse victims tend to abuse others upon reaching adulthood, and have a greater chance of getting arrested, suffering psychological problems, becoming pregnant, scoring low on tests and going to jail. “A third of child abuse victims will go on to abuse their children, so the cycle continues to grow,” he said.Powers cited the case of an 18-year-old Lynn man who allegedly shook his girlfriend’s three-month-old baby to death earlier this year. Rhetorically, he asked, “How do we reach these young men? How do we break the cycle?”The audience seemed to concur that young men from low-income families or broken families often lack male mentors or role models and, as a result, don’t know how to father because they were never fathered.Among the many ideas offered by the audience was to create daycare settings in every high school for teenage mothers to prevent them from dropping out and joining the ranks of the uneducated and impoverished. Others suggested more job training, through programs offered at the North Shore Career Center, for instance ? to break the grip of poverty. Integrating child abuse as a topic in the school curriculum was also suggested.The Greater Lynn YMCA attracted more than 500 new members in the past year, many of them young Latino and Cambodian men. The YMCA also implemented a program that floats membership for three months for those who have lost their jobs, rather than see these members drop out, said Tania Buck-Ruffen, director of the YMCA’s childcare programs.”By the end of the forum, we had 15 people signed up for the task force and we expect more will follow suit. There’s a lot of interest in the problem and a lot of peop
