{"id":10174,"date":"2008-10-20T11:06:41","date_gmt":"2008-10-20T16:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/?p=10174"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:53:18","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:53:18","slug":"too-many-men-are-killing-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2008\/10\/20\/too-many-men-are-killing-babies\/","title":{"rendered":"too many men are killing babies"},"content":{"rendered":"

..\u00a0 \"\"<\/a> . Baby Killers: in Troy, MO, and Troy, NY <\/em>.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a> ..<\/p>\n

O<\/strong><\/em>n Tuesday, September 23, 2008, in the shrinking, economically-challenged City of Troy, New York<\/a>, four-month-old Matthew Thomas died of serious head trauma due to injuries sustained when his 26-year-old, 500-pound father, Adrian Thomas, “threw him down hard” several times while arguing with his wife. (see CapitalNews9<\/a>)<\/p>\n

That same day, almost a thousand miles away in the thriving, rapidly growing little City of Troy, Missouri<\/a>, 6-week-old Hannah Edwards sustained severe brain damage after being struck in the head and shaken by her mother’s boyfriend, Ronald I. Schupmann, 23, who was not her biological father. (See the St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

Hannah died on Friday, September 26, the same day that little Matthew Thomas was buried and his father (who was recently unemployed and depressed) was indicted for murder, in Troy, NY.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/em>\"\"<\/a> F<\/strong><\/em>or quite a few months, I’ve been wanting to write about a terrible trend I’ve noticed here in the New York Capital Region the past few years: Although we are a relatively small Metro area, every month or so a grown man is in the news for killing a baby (usually his own or his girlfriend’s).\u00a0 The men are most often in their early to mid- 20’s. \u00a0 They shake, punch or throw the child — usually because the baby is crying inconsolably. Their victims are not even toddlers yet, and often just a few months old.<\/p>\n

I’m finally writing this post, because the Schenectady Sunday Gazette<\/em> featured the article “Shaken baby deaths persist: Problem is all too common<\/a>” (by Jill Bryce, October 19, 2008) on the front page of the local news section.\u00a0 From the article and additional research, I’ve learn that about 80% of the perpetrators of Shaken Baby Syndrome or Abusive Head Trauma to young children are male.\u00a0 In addition:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> “The abuser is usually the baby\u2019s father or the mother\u2019s boyfriend. Female perpetrators tend to be a caregiver other than the biological mother.”<\/p>\n

W<\/em>hen Googling \/Troy murder infant father<\/em>\/ yesterday, to locate the recent case described above from the nearby city of Troy, NY (find more coverage of it here<\/a> and here<\/a>), I discovered the strange coincidence of baby Hannah’s death the same week as Matthew’s in the very-different city of Troy, Missouri.<\/p>\n

According to the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome<\/a>, SBS\/AHT (shaken baby syndrome\/abusive head trauma) is a term used to describe the constellation of signs and symptoms resulting from violent shaking or shaking and impacting of the head of an infant or small child.<\/p>\n