Ridiculous excuses - Parents give outlandish explanations for children's broken bones
Published:Sunday | March 20, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Tyrone Reid, Sunday Gleaner Reporter
HEAD OF the orthopaedics unit at Jamaica's sole children's hospital says many parents lie to cover up suspected cases of abuse.
According to Dr Dayanand Sawh, some of the explanations parents and guardians offer to the medical staff at the Bustamante Hospital for Children in a bid to mask the suspected cases of abuse are downright preposterous.
He believes many of the stories told by the parents as to how the child fractured one of the largest and toughest bones in the human body - the femur - are, at best, ludicrous.
Some parents contend that the femur, or thigh bone, was broken after the child fell while running. "This is highly unlikely," the orthopaedic surgeon said.
Case in point: A parent told Sawh that the child's thigh bone was broken after a coconut fell from the tree under which the child was standing. After explaining to the parent that such a scenario defied scientific logic, the parent adjusted his argument and said the coconut fell from the tree, hit the child on the head, and caused the child to stumble and subsequently fall under a jackfruit tree, and then a fruit from that tree fell on the child's leg while the child was lying on the ground and broke the femur.
"As far as I know, he (the parent) is still wandering off out there, free and above board, and it's irritating," Sawh lamented. "Some of the explanations are absolutely ridiculous," he added.
Findings
A study on the more than 200 cases of broken bones brought to the hospital for treatment said: "Motor vehicle/pedestrian accident (car motorcycle, tractor, bus or bicycle)" was listed as the mechanism of injury in 53 of the cases while one was due to a gunshot wound. Eighty-five cases listed "fall from height (tree, wall, rooftop, stair)" as the cause of the fracture; 37 parents/guardians said it was caused by direct trauma from a person or object; another 39 attributed the broken thigh bone to "fall while running, standing (or) slipping on level (a) surface", while 22 cases had an "unknown/unclear mechanism" as the cause of the broken thigh bone.
There are even repeated cases of suspected abuse where a child would be treated for a fractured wrist and sent home but returns sometime after that with another broken bone somewhere else on the body.
Some 238 cases of femoral fractures, treated by the hospital between 2002 and 2010, were used in the review. "One hundred and twenty of them were babies. And we know that (up to) 60 per cent of these - 120 - were child abuse, either by neglect or abuse, and none of them has been prosecuted as far as I know," said Sawh.
Most of the cases were from the parishes of Kingston and St Andrew, which is not surprising since the hospital is based in the Corporate Area. The KSA region accounted for 121 cases while St Catherine was next with 60. A high concentration of the cases came from the Kingston 11 area, which includes communities such as Olympic Gardens.
Kevin Bryan, manager of the Ewarton childcare facility and a former Child Development Agency (CDA) investigation officer, told The Sunday Gleaner that in matters of suspected cases of abuse, the executive agency's intervention is largely social. He explained that if the CDA looks into the suspicious case and finds that there is credible evidence of abuse, the matter is turned over to the police for further investigation and the laying of possible charges.
"The police are the ones that would explore the whole thing about requesting medical reports to substantiate their case against the alleged abuser," Bryan said.