ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the various types of physical child abuse encountered by professional caretakers. It explains battered child syndrome and what constitutes physical child abuse. The chapter examines Munchausen syndrome and the state laws dealing with child abuse. It explores shaken baby syndrome and the controversy regarding the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome. Many would date the acceptance of the phenomenon of child abuse from 1961 with Dr. C. H. Kempe’s use of the term battered child syndrome. In 1998, a landmark study was published about the effects of adverse childhood experiences on adult health outcomes. In 1874, Henry Bergin, who was the founder and first president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, discovered that there were no laws protecting children from child abuse. Children with birth defects, female infants, and the children of poor families were killed as a matter of course several hundred years before the birth of Christ.
