John Jay College Of Criminal Justice | The City University of New York

 

By Sharon Johnson

           Child abuse and neglect are not new problems.  Each year the media report terrifying examples of children beaten, raped and deprived of food, shelter and other basic necessities.  Indeed, the National Institute of Justice estimates that each day nearly four children — most of them under the age of five — die of abuse and/or neglect.

But what happens to children who survive — the babies abandoned on streets or in hospitals, toddlers who are stabbed or shot and children left to starve in roach-infested apartments? 

How do these experiences impact their physical and psychological development?  Do they become depressed or abuse alcohol later in life?  Are they more likely to become juvenile delinquents, violent criminals and abusive parents?  Why, given similar conditions do some children experience long-term consequences while others are able to cope and even thrive? 
And, most important of all, what can society do to decrease these children’s vulnerability for later problems in behavior and functioning?

Thanks to the pioneering research of Cathy Spatz Widom, distinguished professor of psychology, we have a better understanding of the long-term consequences of early physical and sexual abuse and neglect.  This research began in 1986 with an initial focus on the widely held assumption that children who are abused and neglected grow to be abusive parents and violent criminals and has expanded into an exploration of other areas of functioning.

A leading scholar in criminal justice as well as psychology, Professor Widom joined the faculty of John Jay last fall.  In addition to her research, she teaches a course on child abuse and neglect for doctoral students.  Professor Widom came to John Jay from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), Newark, where she had been a university professor in the Department of Psychiatry at New Jersey Medical School.

A fellow of the American Society of Criminology, she had earlier chaired the Department of Criminal Justice at Indiana University and was director of the Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center at the State University of New York in Albany.

In January, the Archives of General Psychiatry published her latest study that found that child abuse and neglect were associated with a 51 percent increased risk of current major depressive disorder (MDD) in young adulthood.

Although child abuse had been linked to depression in clinical populations and community surveys, the study by Widom and colleagues at UMDNJ was both innovative and definitive.  It included 676 children with substantiated cases of physical and sexual abuse and neglect before the age of 11.  They were matched on age, race, sex and approximate family social class with 520 non-abused and non-neglected children.  All were followed up into young adulthood.
This study provided new evidence that neglected children are at increased risk for depression.  About one-fourth of the neglected children met criteria for lifetime major depressive disorders and 15 percent for current MDD.

“Given that neglect represents almost two-thirds of reported and substantiated cases of maltreatment in the United States, more attention needs to be paid to these children,” said Professor Widom.

Professor Widom’s latest study also has potential implications for the treatment and management of individuals who have major depression and other psychiatric disorders such as alcohol or other drug abuse and/or dependence.  She found that most individuals in the control group reported becoming depressed after alcohol or other drug abuse while those who are abused and/or neglected turn to alcohol or drugs to self-medicate.  Exploring basic assumptions about abused or neglected children has been a hallmark of Professor Widom’s research.  In 1986, she decided to question the popular notion that abused or neglected children often become abusive parents and violent criminals.

“The shaken baby syndrome had gotten attention in the 1970s and sexual abuse in the 1980s, so researchers were beginning to be concerned with the long-term physical, psychological and behavioral consequences,” Professor Widom said.  “This topic interested me too.  As an undergraduate at Cornell University, I had majored in human development and studied how family relationships affect children.”

Designing a study to measure long-term effects of child abuse and neglect was difficult, however.  Widom spent the first six months of a sabbatical in the library at Harvard University reading the literature.

“Most previous studies were conducted retrospectively,” she explained.  “As a result, findings were often ambiguous.  When asked as adults or adolescents about their childhood abuse, some participants refused to disclose them while others couldn’t recall incidents.”

To overcome these drawbacks, Professor Widom decided to use the prospective cohort approach, a research design that had been used successfully by a group of medical researchers who had studied the long-term effects of oxygen deprivation during childbirth on children’s subsequent physical and mental development.  They identified two groups of children born at the same hospital who were matched according to sex, race, and other characteristics and then followed them through adolescence.  Those who had suffered oxygen deprivation had the worst outcomes.

With funding from the National Institute of Justice, Professor Widom identified a large group of children with cases of physical and sexual abuse or neglect from court records from 1967 to 1971 and another group of non-abused and non-neglected children from birth records from the same time period.  The children were ages 0-11 years old at the beginning of the study and the follow-up involved a search of their criminal records to determine whether they had any arrests as juveniles or adults.

“The study showed that childhood victimization increases the likelihood of delinquency, adult criminality and violent criminal behavior,” she said.  “Childhood abuse (physical and sexual) and neglect significantly increases a person’s risk as a juvenile by 59 percent, as an adult by 27 percent and for a violent crime by 29 percent.”

The study had great significance for the criminal justice system because it showed that the odds are almost two times higher that an abused or neglected child will be arrested for a violent crime as a juvenile than a child of the same age and race who grew up in the same neighborhood or who was born in the same hospital at the same time.

Originally published in Science, the study was widely praised.  The American Association for the Advancement of Science awarded Professor Widom its Prize for Behavioral Science Research in 1989.  She also received the Outstanding Research Study Award from the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children and the Award for Distinguished Contributions in Applied Research in Psychology and Law from the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology.

One of Professor Widom’s most important findings was that the majority of abused and neglected children did not have criminal records.

“The good news is that there is an emerging science of prevention and that there are some programs that can be effective,” she said.  “For example, home visits by a public health nurse have proven effective for high-risk parents.  The nurses provide services and models for effective parenting.”

Preschool programs for those at risk for impairment of intellectual functioning and eventual school failure are also important, she continued.  For older children, truancy-reduction programs, including intensive monitoring, counseling and other family stress reduction strategies and other services are valuable.

Professor Widom’s prodigious body of research has also included studies on topics including psychopathology, anti-social personality disorder, juvenile delinquency and female criminality.

Few people know, however, that Professor Widom’s scholarly interest in these topics was triggered by an uninvited visitor to a psychology class she taught at Brandeis University in 1969.  A graduate assistant, Professor Widom was leading a discussion on aggression, violence and murder when Stanley Bond, a former convict who was participating in a special program at the university, appeared.  He listened for a few minutes and then abruptly left.

A year later, Bond made headlines when he and five companions robbed a bank in Brighton, MA.  A police officer, the father of nine children, was shot and killed.  The three men — all former convicts — were quickly apprehended.  The two women, roommates at Brandeis, went underground. 

“This man stimulated my interest in the behavior of difficult and dangerous individuals and the problems they pose for psychologists and the law,” she said.  “I switched my area of study from social psychology to personality and psychopathology and traveled to Broadmoor Hospital near London to do my dissertation on psychopaths.”

Formerly known as the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, the institution had opened in 1863 and become synonymous with some of Britain’s most notorious criminals.

Professor Widom tested the assumption that psychopaths resort to crime because they lack the ability to work with others.

“My research showed that psychopaths will cooperate if there is something in it for them,” she said. 

The study also was important because it helped provide insight into the differences between incarcerated and non-institutionalized psychopaths.

“Today we recognize that psychopaths can be Wall Street tycoons and other successful individuals who never see the inside of a prison or commit a violent crime because their charm and glibness allow them to manipulate others into giving them money and other things they want,” she said.

After she received her PhD in 1973, Professor Widom joined the psychology department of Harvard University where she explored the interface between psychology and criminal behavior.

“I never dreamed that I would be doing the challenging research I’ve done,” she said.  “Like many women, my career has been happenstance.  Men tend to know what they will be doing in five to 10 years.  But I took the opportunities as they evolved and it turned out to be a wonderful journey.”

Sharon Johnson is a freelance writer.