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This Child Fatality information provided by the Injury & Violence Prevention section of the Office of Disease Prevention & Epidemiology.
- Special Topics 7. Family History of Domestic Violence   The 1998 Oregon Domestic Violence Needs Assessment documented that 15% of children live in a home in which physical abuse by an intimate partner occurred in the last year. Domestic violence in a child?s home may put that child at risk for child abuse and other physical injuries.
CFR teams classified children who died as to whether or not their families were known to have
any history of domestic violence.11 This information might be obtained from law enforcement,
SCF, mental health, the district attorney, or the child?s medical records. A history of being a
victim of domestic violence was reported in 11% (20/185) of cases reviewed. A history of a
family member perpetrating domestic violence was reported in 23/185 (12%) of the cases. In 34% (10/29) of cases with a family history of alcohol abuse, there was a family member perpetrating domestic violence. In the 35% (11/31) of families with identified substance abuse problems, there was a family member perpetrating domestic violence. In four cases, the child had a prior history of being a victim of domestic violence and in five cases the child had been a perpetrator in a past domestic violence incident.
Recommendations to Prevent Deaths Among Families with a History of Domestic Violence
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Domestic violence often is not reported to official sources. This strongly suggests that the prevalence of domestic violence reported by the CFR teams is an underestimate of the true prevalence in the homes of children who have died. Better ascertainment of domestic violence may help identify children at higher risk for untimely death who might be saved by an aggressive intervention.
