ABSTRACT
The issue of child maltreatment first intruded into the public consciousness in the 1960s with the “discovery” of the battered child syndrome. Child abuse was exposed when Kempe and his colleagues (1962) challenged the ubiquitous “unspecified trauma” terminology that was used to refer to child injuries seen in emergency rooms and doctors’ offices across the country. The media’s discovery of the issue soon led to public policy and government initiatives in the 1970s and into the 1980s.
