Right Parenting - The Hand That Rocked The Cradle

A Strange Case:

I won’t forget those few moments when I went through all those video attachments sent with those e-mails. The sender was the father of one of my patients. The patient – a cute cuddly toddler who was not yet two years old. As her pediatrician, I was seeing her since she was just a six month old baby. A sweet, healthy baby who mostly came to me for routine, ‘Well baby’ vaccination visits. The parents were nice, easy going and friendly – ones with whom you could easily lapse into idle chatter about life in general within no time.

Their smiling faces were becoming clouded with worry over last two months. Over that period, their visits had become alarmingly frequent to the clinic. The reason – some strange skin marks kept on appearing and disappearing on baby’s body. The baby’s cherubic face was looking strangely puffy. Dark circles were showing up below her eyes. The ears were swollen. There were some scratch marks on chest and fingers. The pattern of the skin rash wasn’t fitting into any particular allergy or infection. It was like a congregation of small superficial bruises. Sometimes they would be on face, sometimes on thighs, sometimes on arms, sometimes on buttocks and sometimes on abdomen. One spot would clear and other would appear at another site. This cycle was going on and on, inspite of the medicines. The laboratory tests had revealed no particular abnormality. I was getting worried too. Was it a hidden malignancy or some rare skin disease? I kept on going through reference books and internet sites to find a clue. After their every visit, I would go home and discuss the findings with my wife, who happens to be a dermatologist. But despite all these efforts, the diagnosis was eluding me. Except one dark possibility – ‘Child abuse’!

Unearthing the mystery:

If someone at home was physically hurting the baby in some way, then these strange findings could be explained. Knowing the parents as well as I did, I would have put my last penny on them if someone had blamed them for these happenings. But both of them were working in offices and the baby was being looked after by a maid. By their second or third visit itself, I had asked the parents about the possible beatings by the housemaid but both vouched for her sincerity and efficiency. The only thing noticed by them was that the moment one of the parents arrived home, the baby would come and cling to them and would just refuse to go to her. There wasn’t much to read into that observation. Or was there?

I got the child X-rayed to see if I could get any evidence of a bone injury – a very common finding in cases of severe physical abuse. All X-rays turned out normal ruling out the confirmation of my suspicion.

It was decided that we should try and do some surveillance on the housemaid’s activities. But it was to be done only after informing her that her activities in their absence were going to be monitored. There was a web-cam attached to the computer kept in their hall and that could capture short video clips at regular intervals.

Caught in the act:

Two weeks of surveillance bore no fruit or so they thought. There were a number of clips on the computer hard disk but none showing anything suspicious on initial screening. Just before deleting them all, the father decided to go through each clip thoroughly and there it was. The evidence was staring him in his face. A hideous, horrific slide show of torture and torment inflicted by a treacherous and vicious adult upon a helpless, defenseless child, revealed by the gadget used by most for sending fun photos and doing live chatting!

The grainy images captured by web-cam showed the housemaid handling the child as if she was a rag doll –rubbing the child’s face with a towel so hard that her entire body jerked backwards, pulling her hair tightly, pushing the feeding spoon down her throat, repeatedly hitting her face with a plastic toy. It was a terrorizing graphic tale of a savage and beastly human being who was entrusted with care of an innocent angel faced baby and who had instead chosen to harm and hurt her without feeling any pangs of conscience. Once in a while she was taking care to hide her actions by covering the field of camera vision with her back but seeing the number of the captured clips where she was caught off guard, it was obvious that her cruelty had often got better of her cunning! The only fact that the small child was too young to articulate well had saved and aided the servant earlier.

Now everything was clear. The puffiness of face and black eye of the baby were a result of repeated facial blows and pushes. The ear swellings were because of ear-pulling and twisting. The scratch marks were made by servant’s long nails. The other bruises were all results of various bodily injuries.

The maid was sacked immediately and her relatives were instructed to repatriate her to her country. The decision wasn’t accepted without a fight but they had no choice left after the parents showed them the evidence- her black deeds captured by web-cam.

It was a story that ended on a happy note, in the sense that it did not leave anything more sinister in its wake. Just imagine how many more such stories must be lying untold and worse still unearthed.

The physical bruises of the child have healed long since. About the bruises on her little mind, we can only hope and pray that they would heal soon. A broken trust about humanity and kindness is hard to mend!

Child Abuse : A fact-file

Child abuse is physical or mental injury, sexual abuse, neglect or maltreatment of a child under eighteen years of age by a person responsible for child’s welfare.
About 1% of children are reported victims – an estimate far below the actual figure which will always remain in doubt. In US alone, estimated 1- 4 million children are likely victims every year.
Two thirds of abused children suffer physical abuse, one fourth from sexual abuse and rest from underfeeding, medical neglect, inadequate supervision, intentional drugging or poisoning and severe emotional abuse.
One third cases of physical abuse occur under the age of one year and another one third between one and six years.
In 90% cases the aggressor is a relative from the household and in around 5% cases, house servants or babysitters are involved.
Factors like poverty, unemployment, psychiatric disturbances, drug abuse, marital discords and history of abuse in their own childhood in care-givers makes them more likely aggressors.
Handicapped, retarded, hyperactive, difficult and foster children are more likely sufferers.
Ideally these cases should be managed adopting a team approach. Such a team needs presence and co-operation of pediatricians, psychologists, psychiatrists, social agencies and government authorities.

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