Child Maltreatment Rates Soar During Military Deployment

War deployments place stress on both soldier parents and civilian spouses left behind. However, it is the children who may suffer the most as they both miss and worry about the deployed parent and are affected by the additional stress put on the family, often suffering emotional or behavioral problems as a result. In the worst cases, these children may even suffer abuse or neglect, which increase in times of parental stress.

Previous studies have shown a relationship between large-scale deployments and rates of child abuse and neglect. Now, a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association looks at individual families for the first time, finding that military deployments result in a dramatic increase in rates of child maltreatment, incidents of mistreatment by civilian women and severity of abuse.

Using data from the Army Central Registry and the Army Family Advocacy Program, researcher Deborah Gibbs of RTI International studied 1771 families of enlisted US Army soldiers who experienced at least one combat-related deployment between September 2001 and December 2004. Records indicated that at least one substantiated incident of child maltreatment, defined as the neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse or sexual abuse of a child, had occurred in these families during this time. For 90 percent of families, the maltreatment was an isolated incident, while an additional nine percent had documented cases of maltreatment on two or more days.

Gibbs found that the rate of child maltreatment in these families increased 42 percent during times in which the soldier-parent was deployed, with nearly tripled rates of abuse or neglect among female civilians. Among deployed soldiers, rates of abuse by Caucasian males home on leave also increased. About two-thirds of child maltreatment cases involved child neglect, which tripled during deployment. Meanwhile, there was no significant change in mild cases of child maltreatment, moderate to severe cases further increased 60 percent during deployment. Interestingly, child maltreatment rates did not increase among male civilian parents.

As the report suggests, these "findings confirm the need for supportive and preventive services for Army families during times of deployment." The Army has responded by reportedly hiring an additional 1000 family readiness support assistants, increasing funding to its respite child care program, designed to give parents a short-term break from child care, and raising the number of home visits to parents at bases with the highest rates of child neglect.

ABSTRACT:<"http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/298/5/528"> Child Maltreatment in Enlisted Soldiers' Families During Combat-Related Deployments