Physical child abuse: a view from forensic physical anthropology

Abstract

Child abuse is a bio-psycho and historical phenomenon, which has recently gained interest due to increasing global violence. Each time, more frequent, we know of cases where children are cruelly mistreated and even dieying victims of extreme violence. Understanding the causes and components of this entity is vital to find a long term solution. The aim is to consider biological features (such as inheritance and neuro-hormonal) in coercion with social factors (such as the profile of the family and its members, education, work and economic resources), customs and cultural characteristics of the group to which these belong, all as part of a country with an ideology and a hierarchical exclusionary system, which are the elements that determine the severity of the problem and that directly affect one of the most vulnerable groups of society: children under age. The only evidence the forensic physical anthropologist has are the bones as material witnesses to this abuse, although analyzing them will open the doors to recreate the last moments of those victims of such abuse, because it is a problem that goes beyond injury and it is possible to determine the integration of all the above factors.