TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS—The number of children who died across the state as a result of abuse and neglect increased from 2016 to 2017, according to the Indiana Department of Child Services’ latest report on child fatalities.

DCS, in its report released Friday, said the agency examined the deaths of 314 children and determined that 65 ranging in age from one month to 15 died from abuse or neglect in fiscal year 2017. That is up from 59 who died in the previous year. The fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30.

Of those, 21 deaths were due to abuse while 44 were caused by neglect. Thirteen of the children who died, or about one in five, had prior contact with DCS, the agency said in a news release that accompanied the report.

Among the abuse cases included a mother who strangled her 4-year-old with a scarf because she was angry at the child’s father for leaving her alone with two children. The child was injured in 2014 but didn’t die until 2017, according to the report. The mother is serving a 20-year prison sentence for aggravated battery.

Forty-five children were younger than age 3, which aligns with national trends showing that young children are at the highest risk for abuse or neglect, the report said.

Out of the 92 counties in the state, 36 reported one or more deaths related to abuse or neglect, with Lake County having the most with nine deaths, while Marion County reported seven and Clark County reported four.

Twenty-seven or about 42% were determined to be accidental and 30 deaths were declared to be homicides. The manner of death in seven fatalities could not be determined and one death, that of a 15-year-old boy, was a suicide.

The leading cause of death in the abuse cases was head trauma, with 10 child fatalities. The most common cause of death in neglect cases came from either the child drowning or the child dying because the caregiver did not provide proper sleeping care.

In many of the deaths, the main person responsible for the child’s death was someone who was biologically related, most often the parent.

DCS reported that in many cases, either financial stresses or substance abuse within the families contributed to the child abuse or neglect.

“We’d only be speculating as to why, but this is a consistent trend,” said Noelle Russell, DCS spokesperson. “Substance abuse and poverty are consistently cited as among the most common contributing factors in child fatalities caused by abuse and neglect.”

The report cites the case of a 3-month-old child who died from a gunshot wound to the face. The uncle of the child, who said that he had used too much marijuana and had fallen asleep, was charged with murder, neglect of a dependent resulting in death and pled guilty to reckless homicide with five years in prison.

In another case, a 7-year-old died of a traumatic brain injury as the result of an all-terrain vehicle crash. The child was riding between the mother and a friend who was learning to drive the vehicle. Investigators determined that the friend had taken a Jell-O shot before getting behind the controls and the mother tested positive for methamphetamines. The mother received a two-year prison sentence.

DCS, in the report, said the child death data is compiled from multiple source, including DCS records, death certificates, coroners’ reports, autopsy reports and law enforcement records.

FOOTNOTE: Brandon Barger is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalists.