:00:06. > :00:10.beaten to death. But hers is just one story. Behind each face are
:00:10. > :00:20.dozens of others. Every year, hundreds, possibly thousands of
:00:20. > :00:20.
:00:20. > :00:25.children die in the world's richest democracy. Killed by people meant
:00:25. > :00:32.to care for them. Clearly it is a huge public health issue. It is a
:00:32. > :00:42.major epidemic. Let us get to the developing story of the death of a
:00:42. > :00:47.
:00:47. > :00:51.three-year-old boy. Mother charged with manslaughter. If that was a
:00:51. > :00:54.health issue, if that was kids getting bums on their hands, it
:00:54. > :00:59.would be called an epidemic. Police say she was forced into a foot
:00:59. > :01:03.locker. In the hospital with liver damage. I am so tired of a lack of
:01:03. > :01:13.response. She is four years old. Child abuse is completely
:01:13. > :01:14.
:01:14. > :01:24.preventable. At the scene, investigators found two children.
:01:24. > :01:41.
:01:41. > :01:46.We're breeding an army of future It was March 2007. San Antonio was
:01:46. > :01:56.in full bloom. But in this street, residents realised something had
:01:56. > :02:10.
:02:10. > :02:17.gone wrong. They found the bodies of two babies. So the baby was
:02:17. > :02:20.under this gap? She was there for three months. Three months? Yes.
:02:20. > :02:23.During the investigation and trial that followed, their mother
:02:23. > :02:26.admitted to beating her 18-month- old daughter to death because she
:02:26. > :02:31.would not stop crying. Weeks later she also killed her four-month-old
:02:31. > :02:35.son Sebastien and buried him next to his sister. Valerie Lopez and
:02:35. > :02:42.her boyfriend are in prison for life. Four years on their flat is
:02:42. > :02:45.still up for rent. The community is still in shock. Elsewhere in the US,
:02:45. > :02:55.thousands of other children have died since in circumstances just as
:02:55. > :02:57.
:02:57. > :03:01.chilling. Child abuse is a crime like no other. It happens behind
:03:01. > :03:03.closed doors to those who often have no voice. It is difficult to
:03:03. > :03:07.detect, more difficult to investigate and extremely hard to
:03:07. > :03:12.come to terms with. No family, no community wants to admit it is
:03:12. > :03:15.failing to protect its children. And yet more and more people,
:03:15. > :03:25.doctors, educators, congressmen, are warning that in the United
:03:25. > :03:25.
:03:25. > :03:28.States child abuse is a problem of massive proportions. While it
:03:28. > :03:36.happens everywhere, better reporting of child abuse makes
:03:36. > :03:39.statistics more reliable in the industrialised world. The only
:03:39. > :03:42.available comparative UN report from 2003 estimates that every week
:03:42. > :03:50.on average two children die from abuse in Britain and in Germany.
:03:50. > :03:53.Three in France. Four in Japan. And 27 in the United States. The
:03:53. > :04:03.combined population of these countries is bigger than the US.
:04:03. > :04:04.
:04:04. > :04:09.But the rate in the US is three times higher. The question is, why?
:04:09. > :04:15.In America, individualism is sacred. In Texas they pride themselves on
:04:15. > :04:25.being more independent, more self- sufficient than anywhere else. We
:04:25. > :04:29.
:04:29. > :04:32.came into Texas because everything is bigger here. The latest data
:04:32. > :04:36.from 2009 shows that 267 children died from abuse here. More than in
:04:36. > :04:39.any other state. Officials say they are better at reporting deaths. As
:04:39. > :04:49.we travelled across Texas we found reasons behind this staggering
:04:49. > :04:50.
:04:50. > :04:53.number. They're far more complex. In her father's memory, Emma will
:04:53. > :04:58.always be four. She would be sitting on the couch. She would
:04:58. > :05:02.look at me and I would look at her. I would ask her, are you daddy's
:05:02. > :05:12.baby? She would laugh and tell me, no I am mummy's baby. I would feign
:05:12. > :05:23.
:05:23. > :05:33.outrage. She would start laughing. In the final weekend she was over I
:05:33. > :05:37.
:05:37. > :05:43.asked if she was daddy's baby. She just said, yes. She just said, yes.
:05:43. > :05:50.We have an update on breaking news. A mother sentenced to prison for
:05:50. > :05:55.not protecting her little girl from abuse. There was bruising all over
:05:55. > :06:04.her body. On her stomach. She had a busted lip. Bruising all over her
:06:04. > :06:11.face. Emma's mother, Abigail Young, moved in with her boyfriend. He had
:06:11. > :06:14.a previous history of child abuse. Lucas was sentenced to life in
:06:14. > :06:19.prison for raping and killing Emma. Abigail is serving a 20-year
:06:19. > :06:29.sentence for failing to prevent her daughter's death. Three weeks
:06:29. > :06:30.
:06:30. > :06:33.before she died, Emma was diagnosed with genital herpes. Sexually
:06:34. > :06:42.transmitted disease was not enough of a reason to remove a child from
:06:42. > :06:50.home. Everybody had a chance to save her. Everybody missed the
:06:50. > :06:56.signs? Everybody missed the signs. There were signs that CBS missed,
:06:56. > :07:06.signs that the doctors missed. Within weeks of her death, two
:07:06. > :07:07.
:07:07. > :07:09.toddlers were killed in Texas. Both were under the watch of Child
:07:09. > :07:12.Protection Services. The agency launched an internal investigation
:07:12. > :07:22.into their deaths. Nobody was fired. Generally we do not talk about
:07:22. > :07:22.
:07:22. > :07:26.case-specific information. There are some times when a woman or man,
:07:26. > :07:29.whoever we are investigating, lies to us and we believe they are lies.
:07:29. > :07:38.Surely the fact a four-year old had genital herpes was enough for
:07:38. > :07:48.investigation? We certainly had medical indications that herpes can
:07:48. > :07:48.
:07:48. > :07:56.be caused by many things. There were assertions. I have had cases
:07:56. > :08:03.on this road. You cannot judge a neighbourhood on whether or not
:08:03. > :08:06.there is an abuse happening here. I would put nothing past anyone.
:08:06. > :08:10.Paul's job is to go from house-to- house investigating abuse that
:08:10. > :08:14.happens behind closed doors. He was not involved in the case, but for
:08:14. > :08:23.him it is a reminder about what happens if he fails. The problem,
:08:23. > :08:26.he says, is that it is easy to fail. John Paul is currently
:08:26. > :08:30.investigating 38 families. That is more than double the recommended
:08:30. > :08:33.case load. The main reason that the lot of investigators are afraid to
:08:33. > :08:38.voice their opinions is because they might lose their job. He was
:08:38. > :08:42.not authorised to talk to us. But he felt it was necessary to do so.
:08:42. > :08:52.I have seen so much happen in the five years I have been with the
:08:52. > :08:52.
:08:52. > :08:56.agency. I feel as if the investigators that are out there
:08:56. > :09:04.doing the hard work, they are not being heard by the upper level
:09:04. > :09:07.management. I think a lot of people need to realise that just like you
:09:07. > :09:12.have police officers that burn out, you can have investigators that are
:09:12. > :09:15.burnt-out. Overworked and underpaid officers and a slow and often
:09:15. > :09:18.inefficient chain of command are not the only reasons why so many
:09:19. > :09:24.children fall through the cracks of the system. The former chief
:09:24. > :09:27.prosecutor of Harris County says that it is a problem. He says the
:09:27. > :09:37.agency focuses too much on keeping families together because that what
:09:37. > :09:38.
:09:38. > :09:42.the Federal Government wants to do. Randy Burton now owns this law firm.
:09:42. > :09:48.That is how he pays for providing free legal services for children in
:09:48. > :09:56.trouble. His cabinets are full of stories of children that were
:09:56. > :10:00.killed because they were allowed to stay at home. In order to preserve
:10:00. > :10:06.the influx of federal money, which has over half the state's for child
:10:06. > :10:16.welfare, it has become an end in itself. We're going to make every
:10:16. > :10:20.
:10:20. > :10:23.effort to try and preserve this. So in a state like Texas, that boasts
:10:23. > :10:26.the lowest rate of removal from homes in the nation, it is not
:10:26. > :10:34.surprising they also have the highest number of child fatalities
:10:34. > :10:38.in the nation. Up to 40% of children who died from abuse in the
:10:38. > :10:41.US had files with Child Protection Services. This makes it very easy
:10:41. > :10:45.for the critics to attack the agency. Not for their lack of
:10:45. > :10:55.desire, but for being too much of a slow, clumsy bureaucracy. Some say
:10:55. > :10:58.
:10:58. > :11:03.critics are missing a bigger The job of Child protective
:11:03. > :11:07.services is protecting children after the fact. The job is not to
:11:07. > :11:12.keep children from being harmed in the first place. That is the huge.
:11:12. > :11:18.Better think that the public needs to understand. It is all about jobs
:11:19. > :11:25.to protect children in the first place. More than 30,000 children
:11:25. > :11:29.are already in. Care in Texas. The system is overloaded. Every year,
:11:29. > :11:32.hundreds of children come to this. Road as they wait for the
:11:32. > :11:39.government to find them a new family or to decide if it is safe
:11:39. > :11:43.enough for them to return to their parents. Some spend months here.
:11:43. > :11:47.Others years. And no matter how many scars, how many bruises they
:11:47. > :11:57.were brought here we have, all of their teachers say that especially
:11:57. > :12:01.
:12:01. > :12:04.the little ones, are dnes, are do go home. Child abuse is possibly
:12:04. > :12:14.the only crime in which the victims simply does not know that something
:12:14. > :12:14.
:12:14. > :12:20.has gone wrong. This TV company is an attempt by cent PJ's to start a
:12:20. > :12:27.public dialogue about child abuse but it is not easy. That taboo got
:12:27. > :12:34.broken about having breast cancer. We need that on this issue. We need
:12:34. > :12:38.the heavy is to help break this issue. We need a first lady.
:12:38. > :12:46.Winning the first lady of the United States to help break this
:12:46. > :12:50.issue. Dallas Children's is one of the biggest paediatric hospitals in
:12:50. > :12:56.the US. From cancer to heart transplants, they do everything
:12:56. > :13:02.year. And yet, child abuse accounts for 37% of the hospital's debts.
:13:03. > :13:08.And they believe that numbers are on the rise. I see more cases in
:13:09. > :13:15.our hospital setting and increasing violence. Cases that involve
:13:15. > :13:21.multiple children in one home are one of -- some of the more striking.
:13:21. > :13:26.A scenario would be sibling sets you were chronically and severely
:13:26. > :13:32.neglected, torture type cases where three siblings walked in a bathroom,
:13:32. > :13:39.for nine or 12 months. Physically abused, sexually abused, tortured,
:13:39. > :13:43.long periods of time. This doctor is one of the few paediatricians in
:13:43. > :13:48.the country specialising in abuse. He runs end abuse and neglect
:13:48. > :13:53.clinic and seize on average, five patients per day. Diagnosing them
:13:53. > :13:58.is often difficult. Most children do not look like the battered baby
:13:58. > :14:02.when we talk about bad entrance syndrome. When we think of a child,
:14:02. > :14:08.we think about bruises and which marks and burns. Most child abuse
:14:08. > :14:11.does not look like that. Most of them have internal injuries with no
:14:11. > :14:16.external manifestation. Doctors have to be aware of it, doctors
:14:16. > :14:19.must think about it. If we don't think about it as a physician, we
:14:20. > :14:26.will miss the diagnosis and that is where education and training is
:14:26. > :14:31.really important. Currently, medical students get Renehan day's
:14:31. > :14:35.work of a leg shares through there, in higher education. Not the
:14:35. > :14:40.students. Dr Cox makes sure that they learn plenty about it and not
:14:40. > :14:45.only inside the hospital. We joined Dr Cox as it will give students
:14:45. > :14:50.where Courthouse in any by a town. Testifying in a case of child abuse
:14:50. > :14:54.is part of his routine. It is a six-month-old little girls, I saw
:14:54. > :14:59.her when she was hospitalised in October and she had a head injury
:14:59. > :15:06.and it required surgery. We are that it -- not allowed to go in
:15:06. > :15:11.without a camera. During the debrief, after his testimony, Dr
:15:11. > :15:15.Cox tells his students that this will be a big part of their work.
:15:15. > :15:21.There is a lot more to this story than what was presented, but
:15:21. > :15:26.ultimately, I am concerned about the safety of the child. How do you
:15:26. > :15:31.prepare for the case? Normally, because this one has been set a
:15:31. > :15:36.couple of times, so I have read through a couple of times. This was
:15:36. > :15:41.ten months ago. And I have seen well over 1,000 kids since then.
:15:41. > :15:45.How often are you called as a winners? Too often. An average of
:15:45. > :15:50.about once a week. We could not fathom what some kind of kids go
:15:50. > :15:54.through, what kind of environment a living. In Washington, some
:15:54. > :15:57.politicians are beginning to recognise what many have told us is
:15:57. > :16:03.a real national crisis. Our role here today is to be a
:16:04. > :16:08.voice to the boys as. Congressional report says that the
:16:08. > :16:13.current numbers of child deaths are in fact a gross underestimate.
:16:13. > :16:21.I have been in for nearly 25 years. And I have attended many earrings.
:16:21. > :16:24.But this has been one of the most painful. In 2009, 1,000, 770
:16:25. > :16:33.children died from abuse according to the official data. The real
:16:33. > :16:38.number, according to Congress, could be 2,500. Expert witnesses
:16:38. > :16:42.explained why the government had to play a more active role.
:16:42. > :16:47.They need emergency help now third child protection, resources are
:16:47. > :16:52.dwindling wild child abuse and neglect is increasing. Here is an
:16:52. > :16:58.example of a programme that many believe can prevent abuse. Crystal
:16:58. > :17:03.is a qualified nurse. Every week, for the next two years, she will
:17:03. > :17:08.visit this house, because the state of Texas says that he fits the
:17:08. > :17:16.criteria of a child at risk. Rennie one person in this family of 10 has
:17:16. > :17:18.a job. Nobody has health insurance. And his parents just turned 18.
:17:18. > :17:23.While cause as blind child abuse are complex, statistics show that
:17:23. > :17:27.it is more common in areas with high rates of poverty and teenage
:17:28. > :17:33.pregnancy. At this stage, lots of new parents will get so frustrated
:17:33. > :17:39.and so overwhelmed that they either throw the baby down on the couch or
:17:39. > :17:44.shake the baby. Thailand and any are determined to be good parents
:17:44. > :17:49.but they say that teenagers need help. I get frustrated. He is
:17:49. > :17:54.crying and I do not know what to do. But I would never heard my son. I'm
:17:54. > :17:58.conscious about what I'm doing. But it does sound like a lot of parents,
:17:58. > :18:02.especially dads, the some of them, they just feel like they're a
:18:02. > :18:06.teenager and they should be going out and having fun and instead they
:18:06. > :18:10.are stuck inside with the baby it is crying. They are going to get
:18:10. > :18:17.frustrated. And they're going to do something that they will regret
:18:17. > :18:21.later. But it happens. Prevention could be an important part of the
:18:21. > :18:26.solution. But because of the recession and budget cuts, dozens
:18:26. > :18:31.of states, including Texas, are cutting their prevention budgets.
:18:31. > :18:36.Leaving millions of children without any safety net. A tireless
:18:36. > :18:40.campaigner and the creator of the nest -- mares visiting programme in
:18:40. > :18:44.Texas, Manawanui says that it is getting harder to push prevention
:18:44. > :18:48.programmes through the Texas legislature. Legislators from both
:18:48. > :18:52.sides absolutely love and adore children. I do not think that they
:18:52. > :18:56.are absolutely educated on the consequences of abuse and how
:18:56. > :19:01.they're paying for it. They will look at Medicare costs going this
:19:01. > :19:10.way, they look at prison costs, remedial education. Guess what,
:19:10. > :19:15.this is one of the most important groups of all. I can see a jury
:19:15. > :19:21.having a tough time with this one. The televised trial as a Florida
:19:21. > :19:24.woman, accused of helping her brother to kill their parents.
:19:24. > :19:28.Prosecutors said that abuse that they had experienced in their
:19:28. > :19:32.childhood was a motive in the manner. Stacey was found innocent.
:19:32. > :19:37.She agreed to talk to us about what it was like to grow up in an
:19:37. > :19:43.abusive home. Crying was forbidden in my house. If you cried, you got
:19:43. > :19:45.beaten up. If you made a sound when you got it, you got it more. If you
:19:46. > :19:50.made her sound will try to move when you got raped, it lasted
:19:51. > :19:55.longer and it got more violent. You just took it and dealt with it. And
:19:55. > :19:58.you just gone up the next day. When you are abused, you do not know
:19:58. > :20:02.anything else but anger and violence and that's all you know
:20:02. > :20:07.how to live and you really have to work at it to change it. 40 years
:20:07. > :20:11.on, Stacey is still in therapy. Her brother is in jail for murdering
:20:11. > :20:15.their parents. The more damage to our children
:20:15. > :20:18.become, the more damage to our society becomes. And we need to
:20:18. > :20:24.open doors for these kids to get help and we need to make it
:20:24. > :20:26.affordable for people to get help. A study done by the US Justice
:20:26. > :20:32.Department in NUS -- New York prison, found that 68% of inmates
:20:32. > :20:36.were abused as children. Those numbers are riding up and
:20:36. > :20:41.they are riding a bin a terrible way for the future of our country.
:20:41. > :20:46.-- adding up. Across the US, many are trying to bring the cycle of
:20:46. > :20:51.violence that starts in childhood to an end. But it is a battle, and
:20:51. > :20:54.it will be won only when the rest of America acknowledges the problem.
:20:54. > :21:01.How would our society acknowledged and allow this to happen? How do we
:21:01. > :21:04.not put more effort into preventing this? Supporting parents when
:21:04. > :21:08.they're in a time of need would be another way. Our government just
:21:08. > :21:15.does not do that. That is not a priority. There are the things that
:21:15. > :21:25.are deemed more important. A until that changes, every six hours, a