Child abuse and neglect-related murders in South Africa: a comparison of two national surveys in 2009 and 2017

Background

Population-based statistics on deaths from child abuse and neglect are only routinely available in countries that have reliable national statistics on child murder. For low-income and middle-income countries, relatively little is known about prevalence trends of child murder. South Africa is an exception, having conducted dedicated national studies on child murders for 2009 and 2017 to provide data on child murders overall and on child abuse and neglect-related murders. We aimed to compare child abuse and neglect-related murders in South Africa across two surveys to determine any change between 2009 and 2017.

Methods

We conducted two retrospective national mortuary-based surveys on murder of children aged 0–17 years for 2009 and 2017 from a proportionate random sample of medico-legal laboratories in South Africa. A sampling frame of medico-legal laboratories for each study year was prepared with stratification by medico-legal laboratory size. A minimum of 2 years after the crime was allowed before data collection to enable progression of the investigation process. Child abuse and neglect-related murders were identified using both medico-legal laboratory post-mortem autopsy reports and police data. To identify a child abuse and neglect-related murder, we primarily used the framework of abuse happening within the context of responsibility of care arrangements but broadened this to include all perpetrators and abuse identified from the data. We stratified age into 0–4, 5–9, 10–14, and 15–17 years and further stratified children younger than 5 years into early neonates (newborns killed within 6 days of birth), 7 days to 11 months, and 1–4 years. We calculated incidence rate ratios (IRR) with 95% CIs to compare rates between 2009 and 2017.

Findings

An estimated 458 (95% CI 377–539) children in 2009 and 213 (179–247) children in 2017 were murdered in circumstances of child abuse and neglect. The percentage of all child murders that were child abuse and neglect-related declined from 2009 to 2017 (458 [45·0%] of 1018 in 2009 vs 213 [25·0%] of 851 in 2017), with the overall age-standardised rate decreasing from 2·6 to 1·1 per 100 000 children aged 0–17 years (IRR 0·43 [95% CI 0·35–0·54]). Girls represented 276 (60·3%) of 458 murders in 2009, which declined to 96 (45·1%) of 213 murders in 2017, and boys represented 178 (38·9%) of 458 murders in 2009 and 109 (51·4%) of 213 murders in 2017. The decrease was statistically significant for girls in the 0–4 year (IRR 0·33 [0·22–0·49]) and 5–9 year (0·33 [0·15–0·73]) age groups and for boys in the 0–4 year age group (0·49 [0·33–0·71]). Among early neonates (within 6 days of birth), the decrease in child abuse and neglect-related murders was more pronounced among girls than among boys (IRR 0·33 [95% CI 0·19–0·56] vs 0·46 [0·28–0·77]).

Interpretation

Child abuse and neglect-related murders are common in South Africa but our study shows that they can be reduced. The high rate of these murders points to the need to continue research and monitoring to inform priority targeted interventions and to better understand the impact of child support policies.

Funding

Ford Foundation and South African Medical Research Council.