What Do We Know about the Class of 2013? Pennsylvania: Priest and Ex-Teacher Get Prison for Abuse

What Do We Know about the High School Class of 2013?
By James R. Marsh on June 13, 2013

This just out from Child Trends; some fascinating and sobering statistics about the high school class of 2013.

BETHESDA, MD — June 11, 2013 — Imagine a senior class of 100. They’re the product of their genetic predispositions, their families, their communities, and all of the opportunities (or lack of opportunities) they’ve encountered since birth. They’ve made both good choices and not-so-good ones. They’re on the threshold of adulthood. But what do we really know about them and what does their future hold?

Child Trends, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center on children and youth issues, examined a range of available statistics to provide this portrait of the high school class of 2013:
....71 have experienced physical assault; 28 have been victimized sexually; 32 have experienced some form of child maltreatment.
....39 have ever been bullied, physically or emotionally; 16 have been bullied in the past year.
....22 are living in poverty; 10 are living in deep poverty.
....10 report they were victims of dating violence in the past year.
10 report they have been raped
.....3 were victims of violent crime in the past year....
http://www.childlaw.us/2013/06/what-do-we-know-about-the-high.html


Pennsylvania: Priest and Ex-Teacher Get Prison for Abuse
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS June 13, 2013

Exceeding sentencing guidelines, a judge on Wednesday gave prison terms to a Roman Catholic priest and a former teacher in a sexual abuse case that brought down a Philadelphia church official. The priest, the Rev. Charles Engelhardt of Wynnewood, and the former teacher, Bernard Shero of Levittown, maintained their innocence, and the judge threw out the most serious conviction against Father Engelhardt for lack of evidence. Still, Father Engelhardt, 66, who had not previously been accused of abusing children, was sentenced to 6 to 12 years in prison. Mr. Shero, convicted of rape, was sentenced to 8 to 16 years....
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/us/pennsylvania-priest-and-ex-teacher-get-prison-for-abuse.html

Child abuse increased as economy crashed, study shows

Child abuse increased as economy crashed, study shows

Poverty, stress lead to harsher parenting and abuse, researchers say By Frederik Joelving 9/19/2011

As the U.S. economy began to tank, the number of abused kids landing in the hospital with severe brain injuries spiked, a new study shows. Anecdotes linking child abuse to the recession have surfaced before, but there had been no hard data to back the connection until now.

“It’s definitely disturbing,” said Elizabeth Gershoff, a psychologist who studies parenting but was not involved in the study.

Although there is no proof that financial hardship itself is causing the uptick in abuse, earlier research has tied parental stress to child maltreatment.

“Living in poverty for parents can be very stressful,” Gershoff, of the University of Texas at Austin, told Reuters Health. “And that in turn leads to harsher parenting.”

....In the three years leading up to the crash in December 2007, the rate of abusive head injuries was 8.9 per year per 100,000 kids. After the crash, the number jumped to 14.7 per 100,000.

“If what we are seeing is even close to generalizable, that is a lot of excess children,” said Dr. Rachel P. Berger, a child abuse expert at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh who co-authored the study.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44573194/ns/health/