Comparison of U.S. Army and Civilian Substantiated Reports of Child Maltreatment

Abstract

Little is known about the similarities and differences between civilian and military child maltreatment cases and no recent study has compared them directly. Understanding the nature of the problems in each could lead to identifying strengths and weaknesses for the development of more helpful prevention and treatment programs. The overall rates of child maltreatment in the U.S. civilian population (14.7 to 11.8 per 1,000) were about double the Army rates (7.6 to 6.0 per 1,000) from 1995 to 1999. These differences were largely because of the higher rate of neglect in the U.S. data--about three times that of the Army--and may be because of factors that are largely controlled in the Army such as poverty, severe substance abuse, homelessness, and other social variables. For 1999 only, we examined the type of maltreatment by age and sex, the victim rates by race/ethnicity, and the relationship of perpetrator to victim.

Parenting and Children's Resilience in Military Families

“…Raiha and Soma ( 1997 ) found rates of CM in the US Army to be 7.4 cases per 1000 children compared with 14 cases per 1000 in the civilian population. Rates obtained by McCarroll et al ( 2004 ) were similar. Rates of neglect follow this same pattern, with the US Army rates being approximately half the civilian rates.…”

“…That said, most studies that use population level rates of offi cially reported CM fi nd that military families have lower overall rates of CM (McCarroll, Ursano, Fan, & Newby, 2004 ;Raiha & Soma, 1997 ; than civilian families. Raiha and Soma ( 1997 ) found rates of CM in the US Army to be 7.4 cases per 1000 children compared with 14 cases per 1000 in the civilian population.…”

“…The similarities include the relative rates of substantiation of different types of maltreatment (e.g., McCarroll et al, 2004 ), likelihood of different referral sources (Linkh et al, 2008 ), fi ndings of decreasing rates of maltreatment over time (e.g., McCarroll et al, 1999 ), and the probabilities of co-occurring IPV and CM (Rumm, Cummings, Krauss, Bell, & Rivara, 2000 ).…”

Trends in US Army child maltreatment reports: 1990–2004

“…An alternative hypothesis is that child abuse and neglect are less serious in the army than in the civilian sector of US society and that children are, in fact, not the victims of multiple maltreatments. In a previous paper, we found that differences in the army and the US were largely due to the high rates of neglect found in the US civilian sector (McCarroll et al, 2004b) and more physical abuse was classified as severe in the army (McCarroll et al, 2004a).…”

The Impact of Work-Related Factors on Soldiers' Treatment: Providers' Perspectives

“…In particular, active duty soldiers had higher levels of severe spousal aggression than comparable civilian populations (Heyman & Neidig, 1999). By contrast, evidence suggests that rates of child maltreatment are lower within military families than civilian ones (McCarroll, Ursano, Fan, & Newby, 2004;Raiha & Soma, 1997), due to relatively low rates of child neglect among military families. The presence of both substance abuse and family violence in military populations suggests that the cooccurrence of these issues might be of concern to clinicians.…”