Child Abuse Actually Decreased During COVID. Here’s Why
Against the dismal health landscape of the pandemic, researchers have discovered some good news about family well-being. Physician Robert Sege, a Tufts University School of Medicine professor of medicine and pediatrics and director of the Center for Community-Engaged Medicine at Tufts Medical Center, and his Tufts MC colleague Allison Stephens found that three different statistical indicators of child abuse—emergency department visits, abusive head trauma admissions, and reports to child welfare offices—dropped sharply in the spring of 2020, precisely as the world shifted into lockdown. This surprised some experts, who feared child abuse would rise as families—under the duress of closed schools, job disruptions, and myriad other pandemic stressors—tried to find their way through. Sege, whose research focuses on child abuse prevention, addressed the paradox in a recent interview.