Women are just as likely as men to violently shake a small child in their care, though men cause more severe injuries and death, according to a new University of Florida study.
Published Monday (March 7) in the journal Pediatrics, the study examines a decade of cases of abusive head trauma from a New York health system. Of the 34 cases reported, six of the children died, says Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen, medical director of the UF Child Protection Team.
“Through the years, I had noticed we had a lot of female perpetrators, so I decided to see if there were any differences, and there were,” said Esernio-Jenssen, a child abuse pediatrician who conducted her research while medical director of a child protection consultation team at a New York children’s hospital. “Victims of males had more significant injuries — all six deaths were from male perpetrators. Another big difference is that males tended to confess and females didn’t.”