786 children die in U.S. over six year span that agencies had reason to know they were in danger

BUTTE, Mont. At least 786 children died of abuse or neglect in the U.S. in a six-year span in plain view of child protection authorities many of them beaten, starved or left alone to drown while agencies had good reason to know they were in danger, The Associated Press has found.

To determine that number, the AP canvassed the 50 states, the District of Columbia and branches of the military -- circumventing a system that does a terrible job of accounting for child deaths. Many states struggled to provide numbers, although Georgia ranked No. 2 and Tennessee was in the top 10. Secrecy often prevailed.

TOP 10 STATES FOR CHILD ABUSE DEATHS

Florida: 117, from 2009 through 2013 (missing 2008) Georgia: 83, from 2010 through 2013, missing 2008-2009 Texas: 76, from fiscal year 2008 through 2013 Ohio: 37, from 2008 through 2012 (missing 2013) Washington: 36, from 2008 through 2013 Illinois: 33, from fiscal year 2008 through 2013 Tennessee: 31, from 2008 through 2012, missing 2013 Louisiana: 30, from 2008 through 2013 Tie: Maryland: 26, from 2008 through 2013 Pennsylvania: 26, from 2008 through 2013 Tie: Missouri: 25, from 2008 through 2013 Oklahoma: 25, from fiscal year 2008 through 2011 (missing 2012-2013) Tennessee statistics are unclear because the state could not make a distinction between investigations started because of the incident that led to a child's death and those already open from earlier incident(s) involving the child. Source: The Associated Press

Most of the 786 children whose cases were compiled by the AP were under the age of 4. They lost their lives even as authorities were investigating their families or providing some form of protective services because of previous instances of neglect or violence or other troubles in the home.

Take Mattisyn Blaz, a 2-month-old Montana girl, died when her father spiked her "like a football," in the words of a prosecutor.

Matthew Blaz was well-known to child services personnel and police. Just two weeks after Mattisyn was born on June 25, 2013, he came home drunk, grabbed his wife by her hair and threw her to the kitchen floor while she clung to the newborn.

Jennifer Blaz said a child protective services worker visited the day after her husband's attack, spoke with her briefly and left. Her husband pleaded guilty to assault and was ordered by a judge to take anger management classes and stay away from his wife. Convinced he had changed, his wife allowed him to return to the home.

She said the next official contact between the family and Montana child services came more than six weeks later -- the day of Mattisyn's funeral.

The system also failed Ethan Henderson, who was only 10 weeks old but already had been treated for a broken arm when his father hurled him into a recliner so hard that it caused a fatal brain injury.

Maine hotline workers had received at least 13 calls warning that Ethan or his siblings were suffering abuse. The caseworker who inspected the family's cramped trailer six days before Ethan died on May 8, 2012, wrote that the baby appeared "well cared for and safe in the care of his parents."

Tennessee's Department of Children's Services had at least one investigation open when Dakota Arndt, a Soddy-Daisy 3-year-old, was battered to death by his mother's boyfriend in August. Dakota had been taken to the emergency room in June with suspected abuse injuries, but DCS left the boy with his family.

Many factors can contribute to the abuse dilemma nationwide: The child protective services system is plagued with worker shortages and a serious overload of cases. Budgets are tight, and nearly 40 percent of the 3 million child abuse and neglect complaints made annually to child protective services hotlines are "screened out" and never investigated.

Also, insufficient training for those who answer child abuse hotlines leads to reports being misclassified, sometimes with deadly consequences; a lack of a comprehensive national child welfare database allows some abusers to avoid detection by moving to different states; and a policy that promotes keeping families intact can play a major role in the number of deaths.

Because no single, complete set of data exists for the deaths of children who already were being overseen by child welfare caseworkers, the information compiled over the course of AP's eight-month investigation represents the most comprehensive statistics publicly available.

But the number of abuse and neglect fatalities where a prior open case existed at the time of death is undoubtedly much higher than the tally of 760.

Seven states reported a total of 230 open-case child deaths over the six-year period, but those were not included in the AP count because the states could not make a distinction between investigations started due to the incident that ultimately led to a child's death and cases that already were open when the child received the fatal injury.

In Tennessee, a coalition of media organizations, including the Chattanooga Times Free Press, sued the state Department of Children's Services to open investigative records of 120 children who died after reports of abuse or neglect between 2009 and 2011. The agency's commissioner was forced to resign.

The data collection system on child deaths is so flawed that no one can even say with accuracy how many children overall die from abuse or neglect every year. The federal government estimates an average of about 1,650 deaths annually in recent years; many believe the actual number is twice as high.

Even more lacking is comprehensive, publicly available data about the number of children dying while the subject of an open case or receiving assistance from the agencies that exist to keep them safe.

"We all agree that we cannot solve a problem this complex until we agree it exists," said David Sanders, chairman of the federal Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities, whose members are traveling the country studying child deaths under a congressional mandate.

States submit information on child abuse deaths to the federal government on a voluntary basis -- some of it comprehensive, some of it inaccurate. In some cases, states withhold information about child deaths in violation of the terms of federal grants they receive.

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