PHYSICAL AND SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN IN THE WEST MIDLANDS

Objective: To describe the convicted and cautioned abusers and the nat ure of the physical and sexual abuse of children using a legal classif ication in an attempt to formulate operational criteria for future com parative studies. Design: A retrospective sequential survey of all cau tioned and convicted physical and sexual abusers between the January 1 , 1988 and June 30, 1994. Setting: The West Midlands police jurisdicti on. Subjects: 1,113 abused children and 964 abusers. Results: The majo rity of all abuse involved a single child. Many abusers lived in the s ame household and were in a position of trust or quasi-trust. When str angers committed abuse, the majority of abuse was sexual. A third of t he abusers were unemployed. Multiple abuse tended to be sexual and was perpetrated by men. The physical abuse of young children tended to be committed by younger women. No woman over the age of 40 had sexually abused a child. Of the children under 12 months, 1.5% had been sexuall y abused and 8.5% had been physically abused. The greater proportion o f physical abuse had occurred in children under 9 years of age whereas sexual abuse was perpetrated more often in girls aged 9 to 11 years. No girls were murdered in this survey. Significantly more boys had bee n buggered. Conclusion: This preliminary study is representative of al l the cautioned and convicted cases within the selected 5-year period and obtained from a source of material hitherto unavailable. Many of t he findings of this preliminary study are in line with previous studie s. Substantial descriptive information has been obtained on a selected population of cautioned or convicted abusers. Further studies may ind icate that the cautioned and convicted are more representative of abus ers generally than previously thought. Expanded studies may eventually produce particularized profiles of both abusers and the abused, but e ven the limited guidance provided by this preliminary study will give some assistance to law enforcement agencies in detection and child pro tection agencies in identifying children at risk and targeting resourc es more efficiently. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.