PENNSYLVANIA News

Parents and relatives are overwhelmingly the most likely perpetrators
of abuse of a child, according to an annual report released by the
state Department of Public Welfare.About 81 percent of the
substantiated 3,365 sexual assaults on children statewide in 2009 were
committed by parents, family members or someone living in the child's
home, the report found. Another 16 percent of the sexual assaults were
committed by baby sitters.Of the 1,647 physical abuses reported
statewide, parents were the abuser 66 percent of the time, with 558
reports of abuse by the mother and 529 reports of abuse by the father.While
media reports often focus on abuse by strangers or others, the abuse of
children has long been a problem within the family, said Lackawanna
County Children and Youth Services deputy director William Browning."Stranger
assaults are really a very small percentage of abuses, but when they do
happen, they're often of a heinous nature and grab the headlines," Mr.
Browning said.The state report, released this week, found
Lackawanna County continued to have a slightly higher rate of child
abuse than the state average, but remained lower than abuse reported in
neighboring counties.The report found 73 children were abused in
Lackawanna County in 2009 - about 0.17 percent of the under-18
population. That is slightly higher than the state child abuse average
of 0.14 percent, but less than the 0.19 percent and 0.26 percent
averages in Luzerne and Wyoming counties, respectively.With a
statistically small difference between the county and state averages,
"it's really hard to say" if the county has more cases of abuse than
other counties, Mr. Browning said. He added it is difficult to compare
child abuse statistics by county."The 67 counties report (abuse)
in 67 different ways," he said.Lackawanna County has changed the
way it handles child abuse in the last five years, Mr. Browning said.
Instead of immediately pulling children out of a home and placing them
in foster care, Mr. Browning said officials and Lackawanna County courts
try to find the best treatment for families.While the numbers of
reports of abuse have remained consistent in the county, Mr. Browning
said officials believe they are improving outcomes through education and
behavior changes.In many cases, parents simply don't know how to
parent, he said."We do have cases of multi-generations of abuse,
where it's a systemic problem. We went about fixing it the wrong way
for about 100 years, and now we're looking at changing that," Mr.
Browning said.Trying to keep the family together improves the
chances the child will have fewer problems in the future, he said.
Parents taught to build a "culture of support" early in a child's life
will have more influence when the child exhibits behavior changes
growing up, Mr. Browning said."The best thing we can do is teach
them (parents) to build on their relationships with the children," he
said.
Tips on
how to prevent child abuse within the home- If a parent becomes
frustrated, he or she should make sure the child is safe, and take a
time-out. "Leave the room, take a small time out to relax," says
Scranton Area Family Center Director Jan Hess, of the Employment
Opportunity & Training Center;- Children sometimes act out
for attention, she said, and the best strategy is to ignore the
behavior, as long as it isn't a danger to the child. The parent might
also try "redirecting" the child, by suggesting another activity the
child could be doing;- "Some parents feel isolated and feel like
they have no one to talk about the challenges they face every day," Ms.
Hess said. Parents should make use of the family, neighbors and other
parents to discuss parenting and best strategies for coping with the
behavior of children.- Some parents need help learning to be a
parent. Ms. Hess said the Scranton Area Family Center has programs open
to any parent on how to deal with behavior problems in children.

May is National Foster Care Month, a time to come together on behalf
of the nearly 500,000 American children who are in foster care because
their own families are in crisis and unable to provide for their
essential well-being.

Through my work with these young people, I know how resilient they can
be.

Foster children have an extraordinary capacity to overcome many
challenges.

But only if they have the support of a caring adult in their lives.

If nothing changes by 2020, nearly 14 million confirmed cases of child
abuse and neglect will be reported.

And 22,500 children will die of abuse or neglect, most before their
fifth birthday.

National Foster Care Month offers an opportunity for informing policy
makers, business leaders and others in Pennsylvania about the urgent
need for many more people to come forward and serve these young people.

Without permanent, nurturing relationships with adults, foster youth are
far more likely than their peers in the general population to endure
homelessness.

They suffer poverty, compromised health, unemployment, incarceration and
other adversities after they leave the foster care system.

People have the power to do something positive that will change a
lifetime for a young person in foster care.

Visit www.psrfa.org or call the Pennsylvania State Resource Family
Association to learn more.

KATHLEEN RAMPER
Executive Director
Pennsylvania State Resource Family Association

State police announced Thursday that they
have a new tool for notifying the public about child abductions — the
Pennsylvania Lottery.
More specifically, the 17-inch digital screens situated at lottery terminals at more than 8,700 retail locations statewide.
Those screens can now be used display pictures and
descriptive information about a missing child when the state police
activate an Amber Alert, according to lottery Interim Executive Director Drew Svitko.
“Now, within minutes of the state police activating
an Amber Alert, a missing child’s picture and other identifying
information can be displayed at convenience stores, gas stations,
restaurants, bowling alleys and grocery stores in all 67 counties,”
Svitko said in a prepared statement. “We hope this upgrade will assist
the public in recognizing an abducted child as soon as possible.”
The screens normally display lottery marketing
messages about jackpots and promotions, lottery spokeswoman Kirstin Alvanitakis said.
Thursday was National Amber Alert Awareness Day.
Acting state police Commissioner Jon D. Kurtz said the Amber Alert
system has helped authorities safely recover 32 abducted children since its creation in 2002.
“Members of the public often provide the crucial information that leads to a
child’s safe return,” Kurtz said in a prepared statement. “The more
people who are made aware of a missing child, the more likely it becomes
that the child will be returned home safely.”
State police first partnered with the lottery in
2004, implementing a system that sent text-only descriptions of missing
children to lottery machines statewide.
Retailers could print the descriptions on lottery ticket paper and show them to customers.

The public can help locate missing persons who may be in danger because
of factors such as age or health through a new advisory system announced
today by acting Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan.
"The Missing Endangered Person Advisory System -- or MEPAS -- will
likely be used most often when an elderly person with a disability or a
young child wanders away from their home or caregiver," Noonan said.
"MEPAS will provide information about the missing individual to
broadcasters to relay to the public. The information also will be sent
to law enforcement and other agencies."
Noonan stressed that MEPAS is not to be confused with the
Pennsylvania Amber Alert System, which uses emergency alerts to notify
the public about kidnapped children deemed to be in imminent danger.
"The Pennsylvania Amber Alert System, which was established in 2002
and also is operated by State Police, provides information about child
abductions through television and radio broadcast messages and various
other means," Noonan said. "MEPAS is not designed to be used for such
cases."
The General Assembly last year passed a bill establishing MEPAS and
designated the State Police to develop and operate the system.
Noonan said a MEPA will be issued only when all of the following criteria are met:

• The circumstances of the incident do not meet the criteria for an Amber Alert;
  
• The individual is missing under unexplained, involuntary or suspicious circumstances;
  
• The person is thought to be in danger because of age, health, mental
  or physical disability, environment or weather conditions, or is known
  to be in the company of a potentially dangerous person;
  
• The requesting police agency is conducting an active investigation
  and has entered the missing person into the National Crime Information
  Center database, and
  
• Sufficient information is available to help the public identify the person.
  

Noonan said a MEPA message typically will provide a description of
the missing person and their attire, along with information on where the
person was last seen.
Noonan offered the following examples of instances in which a MEPA may be requested:

• An elderly dementia patient leaves a residential facility in poor weather conditions without the knowledge of the staff;
  
• A young child walks away from his mother in an area of heavy traffic;
  
• A seriously ill person with a mental disability wanders off without their medication.
  

MEPAs will be sent to all television and radio broadcasters providing
coverage in the general area of the incident. Individual broadcasters
will determine how and when to present the information to the public.
For example, Noonan said, the information may be presented as a
scrolling message on the TV screen, a voice message, or a news update.
The information also will be sent simultaneously to municipal police departments and 911 centers in the area of the incident.
Under the legislation, local police agencies are permitted to put out
their own requests for assistance even if a MEPA is issued. Police
agencies are not required to request a MEPA.
Noonan said MEPAS is a result of a cooperative effort by State
Police, the Pennsylvania General Assembly, the Pennsylvania Association
of Broadcasters, the Pennsylvania Department of Aging, the Pennsylvania
Chiefs of Police Association, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Since her granddaughter died in 2004, Bonnie Bowers has spent her days
on Facebook and other Internet sites, reaching out to parents to teach
them about the options for dealing with that overwhelmed feeling of a
crying baby.

“We sit here and cry,” said Bowers, whose
son-in-law was convicted of shaking and killing his 4-month-old
daughter. “We just cannot believe that it’s so hard to get through to
people that do not understand what can happen when you shake a baby.”


Sara Ganim/Patriot-News
Dauphin County coroner Graham Hetrick

Friday, Dauphin County Coroner Graham Hetrick said an 11-month-old York city
baby boy who died at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center was
also the victim of head trauma caused by child abuse.

Hetrick said the child was brain dead when he was taken off life support.

The boy is the second midstate infant to die of head trauma this year and the third case of deadly infant abuse.

The
infant’s father, Yohan Alfredo Ramirez-Herrera, 26, is being sought by
city police on homicide charges. He was last known to live at 48 S. Penn
St. in York. Authorities did not release the boy’s name or other
details about the case.

Shaken baby syndrome is a commonly
used term for head trauma in infants. Recent studies show the number of
cases in Pennsylvania were rising until 2009 but have since dropped off.


Advocates attribute that to better education for parents in how to deal with the stress of child rearing.

The
York County case, the arrest of a South Middleton Twp. dad in
September, and the recent arrest of a Perry County couple accused of
neglecting their 7-month-old boy are painful reminders of the need for
more help for stressed-out parents, Bowers said.

Bowers
began the Miranda Joy Foundation after her son-in-law was sent to
federal prison to serve a 12½- to 25- year sentence for the death of his
daughter. She uses social media to reach out to parents.

Monday
will be the eighth anniversary of the day doctors told her daughter Amy
that 4-month-old Miranda Raymond wouldn’t live through the next day.

“And it doesn’t hurt any less,” Bowers said. “We do understand what it’s like to live with grief.”

The number of Pennsylvania babies injured or killed because of head trauma doubled between 2003 and 2009.




Graham Hetrick explains shaken baby syndrome

Watch video












Part of that might be the added stress on parents caused by
the recession — the spike was most noticeable in 2007, 2008 and 2009,
when it peaked at 104.

But another part of it was better tracking of these cases, said Dr. Mark Dias, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Hershey Medical Center.

Dias
is the lead investigator for the shaken baby syndrome prevention and
awareness program, which is funded by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention and educates new parents in hospital birthing rooms.

In
upstate New York, where the program is also in place, there has been
more than a 50 percent reduction in shaken baby and abusive head trauma,
Dias said.

“Our incidents rate in upstate New York in 17
counties is actually 45 percent lower than reported incidents rates from
around the world,” he said.

In Pennsylvania, the success rate hasn’t been as high, but there are signs it’s working.

Cases dropped to 80 in 2010. As of Friday, the number is 46.

“If our trend continues ... we are down another 20 cases,” Dias said.

Dias’
numbers are based on what doctors see in hospitals, not what is logged
as abuse by the state Department of Welfare. Many advocates said that’s
because Pennsylvania’s definition skews the number of actual abuse
cases.

Right now, unless an adult is identified as a
perpetrator, a child’s abuse injuries aren’t recorded, said Cathleen
Palm, executive director of the Protect Our Children Committee.

“How
we’re recording that and measuring that ... it should really be about
what’s happening to a child versus what’s happening to an adult,” Palm
said. “It’s hard to definitively measure whether preventions are working
if we don’t have a baseline for that.”

Tuesday, the state
Senate Aging and Youth Committee held a hearing at Children’s Hospital
of Pittsburgh, where Department of Public Welfare officials and a panel
of physicians testified in support of creating an independent task force
that could redefine the state’s definition of child abuse.

Palm was among those who testified.

“There’s a disconnect between what we know is happening to children on the ground and our numbers,” she said.

In his research, Dias found that problem quickly.

“When we first started tracking this, we found there were several cases falling off the radar screen,” he said.

Prosecutors
in Dauphin and Cumberland counties said they’ve noticed that many
parents or caregivers who abuse infants fall into one or more of three
categories: Drug or alcohol abuse, economic hardship and overwhelming
stress.

Sometimes, they just snap.

Justin
Thompson, who is charged with the murder of his 4-week-old daughter
Ahzyre, told police he shook his daughter for three to five seconds
because she wouldn’t stop crying in the middle of the night.

It
doesn’t take much, because a baby doesn’t have fully developed neck
muscles and their heads are proportionally bigger than their bodies,
Hetrick said.

“As the baby grows, there is a little more
protection,” he said, referring to the York County case. “But you are
pretty helpless at 11 months. Believe me, it isn’t easy to sit there and
perform an autopsy on an 11-month-old child and sit there and look at
the innocence.”

FOR HELP

• To get help from the shaken baby syndrome prevention and awareness program, call 717-531-7498.
  
• The Miranda Joy Foundation can be found on Facebook.
  

MIDSTATE INFANT DEATHS

• Jordan Kauffman: 7-months-old, died Jan. 28. His Perry County parents are charged with involuntary manslaughter.
  
• Ahzyre Thompson: 4-weeks-old, died Sept. 1. Her father, Justin Thompson, was charged after admitting to shaking his daughter, police said.
  
• Baby boy in York, 11 months, died Oct. 4. Police have not released
  his name, but said his father, Yohan Alfredo Ramirez-Herrera, is being
  sought on homicide charges. Police are still conducting interviews, but
  the Dauphin County coroner has labeled the death a homicide and called it a case of child abuse.
  

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/10/york_baby_who_died_of_head_tra.html