ABSTRACT
The number of children murdered each year in the United States is relatively small in relation to the total number of murders. This fact has been obscured by the media, which report thousands of children being murdered each year. This dramatic pronouncement is obtained by considering any individual below the age of 21 years as a child. Data for 1999 as to number of murders by age is:
Most child murders occur in the first two years of life, with most of these in the first year. The deliberate killing of a child in the first year of life by either act or omission is infanticide. Most such cases represent filicide, the killing of a child by its parent. In 1999, in the United States, approximately 205 children less than 1 year of age were reported murdered. The most commonly cited weapons used were “personal weapons” — hands, feet fists etc, — 105 cases. Other weapons or manners were strangulation and asphyxia, 29 cases; blunt objects, ten; firearms, four cases: and knives and cutting instruments, six cases; other or not stated, 51.
