Six-year-old Oscar Jimenez Jr. was beaten to death in California, then buried under fertilizer and cement. Two-year-old Devon Shackleford was drowned in an Arizona swimming pool. Jayden Cangro, also 2, died after being thrown across a room in Utah.
In each case, as in many others every year, the alleged or convicted perpetrator had been the boyfriend of the child’s mother – men thrust into father-like roles which they tragically failed to embrace.
Every case is different, every family is different. Some single mothers bring men into their lives who lovingly help raise children when the biological father is gone for good.
Nonetheless, many scholars and front-line caseworkers interviewed by The Associated Press see the abusive-boyfriend syndrome as part of a broader trend that deeply worries them. They note that an ever-increasing share of America’s children grow up in homes without both biological parents, and say the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures.
“This is the dark underbelly of cohabitation,” said Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia. “Cohabitation has become quite common, and most people think, ‘What’s the harm?’ The harm is we’re increasing a pattern of relationships that’s not good for children.”
The existing data on child abuse in America is patchwork, making it difficult to track national trends with precision. The most recent federal survey on child maltreatment tallies nearly 900,000 abuse incidents reported to state agencies in 2005, but it doesn’t delve into how rates of abuse correlate with parents’ marital status or the makeup of a child’s household.
Similarly, data on the roughly 1,500 child abuse fatalities that occur annually in the United States leave unanswered questions.
Many of those deaths result from parental neglect, rather than overt physical abuse. Of the 500 or so deaths caused by physical abuse, the federal statistics don’t specify how many were caused by a stepparent or an unmarried partner of the parent.
However, there are many other studies that, taken together, reinforce the concerns. Among the findings:
• Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents, according to a study of Missouri abuse reports published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2005.
• Children living in stepfamilies or with single parents are at higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents, according to several studies co-authored by David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center.
• Girls whose parents divorce are at significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father, according to research by Robin Wilson, a family law professor at Washington and Lee University.
“All the emphasis on family autonomy and privacy shields the families from investigators, so we don’t respond until it’s too late,” Wilson said. “I hate the fact that something dangerous for children doesn’t get responded to because we’re afraid of judging someone’s lifestyle.”
Census data leave no doubt that family patterns have changed dramatically as cohabitation and single-parenthood became common. Thirty years ago, nearly 80 percent of America’s children lived with both parents. Now, only two-thirds of them do. Of all families with children, nearly 29 percent are now one-parent families, up from 17 percent in 1977.
The net result is a sharp increase in households with a potential for instability, and the likelihood that adults and children who have no biological tie to each other will live in them.
“I’ve seen many cases of physical and sexual abuse that come up with boyfriends, stepparents,” said Eliana Gil, clinical director for the national abuse prevention group Childhelp.
“It comes down to the fact they don’t have a relationship established with these kids. Their primary interest is really the adult partner, and they may find themselves more irritated when there’s a problem with the children.”
That was the case with Jayden Cangro.
In July 2006, his mother’s boyfriend, Phillip Guymon, hurled the 2-year-old 9 feet across a room in Murray, Utah, because he balked at going to bed. The child died from his injuries.
Jayden’s mother, Carly Moore, has undergone therapy since the killing. Yet she continues to second-guess herself about her two-year relationship with Guymon.
“There’s so much guilt,” she said in a telephone interview. “I never saw him hit my kids, ever. But he was gruff in his manner – there were signs that he wasn’t the most pleasant person for kids to be around.”
Guymon has been sentenced to five years in prison for second-degree felony child abuse homicide. Moore thinks the penalty is far too light.
“It’s a hard thing,” she said, recalling Jayden’s death. “You go off to work, you say, ‘See you later,’ and then everything’s completely shattered in a split second.”
Some women can’t see the trouble even when it’s right in front of them.
Jennifer Harvey of Springfield, Mo., acknowledged in court last summer that she continued to date a man for two months after becoming suspicious that he’d killed her 18-month-old son, Gavin.
“I was in denial,” said Harvey, who was placed on five years’ probation for not acting on her suspicions. The boyfriend, Joseph Haslett, was sentenced to life in prison for suffocating the toddler with a headlock.
Such cases trigger a visceral reaction, but there are no simple solutions. Some of the worst cases of child abuse involve biological parents, and examples abound of children thriving in nontraditional households.
“There’s no going back to the past,” said Washington and Lee’s Robin Wilson. “We don’t tell people who they can cohabit with. We don’t tell them they can’t have children out of wedlock.”
Still, there’s agreement that many adults in high-risk households need better parenting skills – whether it’s the harried young mothers often guilty of harmful neglect or the boyfriends and stepfathers often responsible for physical abuse.
“These boyfriends increasingly have been raised without fathers and been abused themselves,” said Patrick Fagan, a family policy specialist with the conservative Family Research Council. “Among the inner-city poor, the turnover of male partners is high. Where’s a boy getting the model of what a father is like?”
So, I have some friends and family members who are missionaries. These people serve their beliefs in the most self-sacrificial way you could ever imagine. I am glad that God has not yet asked me to be a missionary when I see how hard these people work.
