Hundreds of US Kids Die Annually from Abuse, Neglect

About 786 American children died of abuse or neglect from 2008 to 2013 in plain view of child protection authorities, many of them starved, beaten or left alone to drown, the Associated Press has found.

AP investigative reporters reviewed thousands of pages of official reports detailing child fatality records in all the 50 states, the District of Columbia and branches of the military. Most of the 786 children whose cases were gathered by the AP were under the age of 4.

However, the US government estimates that an average of about 1,650 child deaths have occurred annually in recent years, although many believe the real number is twice as much.

The discovery highlights a longstanding ignorance of the care that children received at the hands of adults who were supposed to protect them, Press TV reported.

The report also underlines the alarming lack of record-keeping US agencies have for victimized children, who are often harmed by the people they trust most.

“The child protective services system is plagued with worker shortages and a serious overload of cases,” the AP report said. “Budgets are tight, and nearly 40 percent of the 3 million child abuse and neglect complaints made annually to child protective services hotlines are ‘screened out’ and never investigated.”

“The data collection system on child deaths is so flawed that no one can even say with accuracy how many children overall die from abuse or neglect every year,” AP investigators concluded.

One of the cases reviewed by the AP was a 2-month-old girl from the state of Montana by the name of Mattisyn Blaz, who died from extensive trauma by the hands of her father.

Matthew Blaz, 33, was convicted of beating his infant daughter to death last year and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.