Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 18, 1991 TAG: 9102180247
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The study goes beyond earlier work showing that abused children were 53 percent more likely to be arrested as juveniles and 38 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime, said the study's author, Cathy Spatz Widom of the State University of New York at Albany.
"The harm to children from abuse and neglect may have enormous long-term consequences," she said Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"Other negative outcomes may be more common than delinquency and violent criminal behavior," she said.
Similar findings were reported by Byron Egeland of the University of Minnesota, who compared 23 physically abused children with 75 similar children who were not abused.
During their preschool years, the abused children were more likely to get angry, refuse to follow instructions and lack enthusiasm.
By the time they entered school, they were hyperactive, distractible, lacking in self-control and not well-liked by their peers, Egeland said.
"Abuse had an effect on almost every variable we looked at," he said.
The distorted view of the world that seemed to be shared by the abused children was reflected in the way they told stories, he said.
Abused children asked to relate an incident or tell a story couldn't proceed from beginning to end, often became distracted and jumped to other stories, and didn't seem to understand the reasons for the actions they described, he said.
And they told the stories without any apparent emotion, Egeland said.
He also observed a sharp drop in a measure of intelligence between age 1 and age 2, he said. The abuse probably led to the drop, he said.
"These were kids who, because of the emotional unresponsiveness of their parents, lost interest in exploring their environment," he said.
Widom's study, funded by the National Institute of Justice, led to a report last year that child abuse and neglect is linked to juvenile delinquency and adult criminality.
She is in the second phase of the study, attempting to look at some of the abused children more carefully to determine other consequences of abuse or neglect.
Preliminary findings from interviews with some 500 people led to the conclusions that those who were abused as children show drops in IQ, reading ability and other mental abilities, and are more likely to suffer from drug and alcohol problems and mental illness, Widom said.
by CNB