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An Update on Child Torture Research

(Originally published December 2025)

In March 2018, I disseminated a Sounding Board commentary, “The Torture of Children,” based mainly on a few high-profile child fatalities (Tyler Deleon, Hana Williamson, Gabriel Fernandez, Natalie Finn) and a report on child torture in adoptive homes, completed by the Washington State Office of Family and Children’s Ombuds (OFCO) in 2012. I cited only one journal article in the commentary, “Child Torture as a Form of Child Abuse,” by Knox, et al, published in 2014, and was not aware of this article when I began writing the commentary.

There is always a possibility that analyzes of a few specific child fatalities, in the absence of studies, will misrepresent the characteristics and/or dynamics of child maltreatment, and lead to questionable guidelines for child welfare practice. Even when early conclusions drawn from a few case examples prove to be sound, it is important to have studies that confirm hypotheses based on larger samples. Three of the high-profile fatalities mentioned above involved adopted children or adolescents, and the Washington State OFCO 2012 study was about fatalities and serious injuries that occurred in adoptive homes. These cases and the OFCO report raised the question of whether child torture was actually occurring more often in adoptive families than in birth families, and if so, why? In addition, the emphasis on child fatalities left unanswered the question of what happened to children who survived child torture, and how child welfare and law enforcement agencies responded to the plight of these children.

Since 2022, there have been (at least) three important studies of child torture published in peer reviewed journals and an F.B.I. report that brings together research and case examples, developing a detailed picture of child torture and adding to the understanding of the dynamics of this horrific phenomenon. Many of the case examples cited in these studies and in the 2014 study (Knox, et al) have been taken from hospital-based child protection programs in Washington State, another way that Washington has been in the forefront of distressing trends in child welfare during the past 10-15 years. However, during recent years there have been many high-profile child torture cases around the U.S., suggesting that either the incidence of child torture has increased and become widespread or, that these cases are receiving more media attention, or both.

Definition of child torture

Researchers have sought to develop a definition of child torture that would clearly distinguish it from other types of physical and emotional abuse. In 2014, Knox, et al, defined child torture as “a longitudinal experience of at least two physical assaults (or one extended assault), and two or more forms of psychological maltreatment resulting in prolonged suffering, permanent disfigurement or death.” And: “The abuse typically escalates over time, with offenders justifying their actions as discipline.”

I prefer a definition that focuses on intent: “actions that reflect a deliberate intent to cause extreme physical and psychological harm to a child and that continue after clear indication of severe harm.” Researchers tend to avoid definitions of maltreatment that include intent. However, in the case of child torture to do so ignores what is most shocking about these cases, i.e., the deliberate, premeditated effort of caregivers to cause a child to suffer extreme physical and emotional pain, and the motivation to escalate abuse after a child has been severely harmed. In some cases, child torture reflects offenders’ sadistic enjoyment of cruelty, and is almost always a determined effort to break a child’s will by whatever means necessary.

The range of child torture

These research studies and the F.B.I. report, “Child Torture as a Form of Child Abuse: A Guide for Recognition and Response,” document an astonishing range of child torture (percentages included in FBI report):

Systematic denial or extreme restriction of food and water for days, weeks, months or years (80% of cases)
Confinement in closed small spaces such as closets, cabinets, garages (55%)
Asphyxiation, including strangulation, waterboarding (40%)
Beatings (95%), some of which continue for lengthy periods of time, e.g., hours
Physical abuse that targets genitals, anus, breasts (sexual motivation not required) (40%)
Forced ingestion of urine, toilet water, feces, vomit (25%)
Face/head covered during abuse/torture (30%)
Physically bound by chains or ropes (55%), in some instances outside in winter conditions
Cold/hot baths, showers (30%)
Beaten by all family members, including children and siblings
Placed in stress position, e.g. hands raised over the head for hours, and assaulted when the child drops her/his hands (80%)

This list does not do justice to the wide range of bizarre cruelty perpetrators of child torture have engaged in, or adequately convey the horrific abuse some children have suffered, e.g., a 14-year-old disabled youth in Washington who, earlier this year, was beaten by his mother for hours until he died and whose autopsy found more than a thousand inflicted injuries.

A Washington State study of 47 victims of child torture published in 2024 (Schlatter, et al) found that “All children experienced psychological maltreatment,” including spurning, scapegoating, prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, death threats, threatening or injuring loved ones or pets, toileting restrictions and more. The authors assert: “The torture was designed to dehumanize the child and exert control. These children are essentially imprisoned,” and their existence is often denied by caregivers to the outside world.

Incidence of child torture

In “Child torture as a form of child abuse: An exploratory study of investigative aspects among 42 offenders,” (2024) Shelton, et al state: “Compared to the frequency of child maltreatment, CT (i.e., child torture) is relatively rare. Among the medical community, it is estimated that 1-2% of children being evaluated for abuse are victims of torture.” The authors acknowledge that “The true rate of CT’s occurrence in the population remains unknown.”

Battered child syndrome, which has never been more than 1-2% of screened-in CPS reports, involves impulsive attacks on infants and toddlers with inconsolable crying or challenging disabilities and/or health conditions. Impulsive assaults of young children usually lack the premeditated, deliberate features of child torture, but not always. A story in the May 31, 2025 Seattle Times, “Federal Way man abused daughter, 5, to death, police say” asserts that a father in King County has been “accused of repeatedly punching his 5-year-old daughter’s stomach and hitting her with a metal cup,” after the child kicked over her portable child potty, spilling its content on the floor. The father reported that he “snapped” and started punching the child’s stomach repeatedly… The father told police that he tied the girl’s hands to a door and her feet to the toilet for upward of three hours. A few hours later, he hit the girl multiple times with a metal cup because she didn’t eat her dinner,” the story states. This child’s death was due to deliberate and prolonged cruelty, not an impulsive act.

I worked in two state child welfare systems for more than thirty years (1971-2004) without encountering, or being informed, of a child maltreatment fatality with indications of torture. However, since 2005, there have been a number of child torture fatalities in Washington State, several in adoptive families, and other cases of child torture as reflected in the Schlatter, et al, study of cases from 2006-2021 that did not result in a fatality, i.e., 46 of 47 children survived horrific abuse.

It is no longer accurate to describe child torture as rare (at least in Washington), though it far less common than other types of physical abuse, for example, excessive punishment that occurs during physical discipline of a child. For this reason, even experienced CPS caseworkers may have difficulty recognizing indicators of child torture, especially when children do not have serious injuries that require immediate medical attention.

Offenders

In the Shelton, et al, study of 42 offenders “…half had a criminal arrest history prior to the incident offense,” and “over half of the offenders had a history of abusing other adults and or non-tortured children.” Thirteen offenders, or half of offenders whose psychiatric history was available, “had been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder prior to intervention in the torture case,” in most cases depressive disorder, personality disorders, or trauma disorder.

Schlatter, et al, comment that “This case series found that torturers can be biological parents, adoptive parents, or foster parents. Primary torturers were commonly female and often the primary caregiver.” Shelton, et al, comment: “Contrary to the expectation that females in the sample were co-opted into the abuse out of fear, duress or at the direction of a male co-defendant, it was observed that many of these women played an active role in directing and orchestrating the torture, in addition to perpetrating it.”

Knox, et al, (2014) state that “Several children came into the torturing households through informal family arrangements. We observed that 79% of the primary abusers were not the child’s first degree relative; they included such caregivers as boyfriends, girlfriends, aunts, uncles, grandparents, adoptive parents, and stepparents.”

Shelton, et al, comment that “The themes of violence or antisocial tendencies permeated the lives of these offenders, both past and present, and either as a victim or offender.” Over half of offenders in the Shelton, et al, study had prior arrests, many for assaults.

Knox, et al, assert: “Typically, abusers demonstrated little or no remorse for their actions, … and most perpetrators blamed their victims for precipitating the abuse or causing or abuse to be necessary.” Offenders justified their actions as “necessary discipline.” In two of the high-profile cases I discussed in 2018, caregivers were clearly involved in power struggles with children over food and water intake, and caregivers escalated the abuse when the child or adolescent broke their severe rules. Knox, et al, assert: “The dynamic of psychological and physical cruelty used to control a child is similar to the dynamic often observed in intimate partner violence.”

Knox, et al, maintain that “The nature of these crimes and the perpetrator’s self-justification argues against any reunification with caregivers and the rehabilitation potential of perpetrators is poor.” Once a pattern of child torture has been established in criminal or civil legal actions, state law should not require a reunification plan.

However, it may be possible to effectively intervene in the early stages of dysfunctional and dangerous power struggles before children have been beaten, starved, confined, etc. and before caregivers’ anger has led to dehumanizing, terrorizing, rejecting behaviors and actions intended to humiliate a child. This is not to say that children should be left in homes in which parents have already crossed the threshold of child torture, as discussed above. States’ child abuse statutes should incorporate a definition of child torture, and authorize the immediate removal of a child from a home in which child torture, including its psychological elements, is occurring.

CPS assessment and intervention

Shelton, et al found that in their convenience sample of 20 cases drawn from law enforcement case files “ …17 (85%) there was a documented prior history of CPS contact and/or investigation. The number of CPS contacts ranged from one to 24 per household, resulting in 57 reports across the 17 households.” Several of the cases lacked information regarding investigative findings; of the cases that contained this information less than half (45%) were substantiated. Offenders were frequently able to convince CPS caseworkers that they were engaging in reasonable discipline. The researchers comment: “These past successes with manipulating systems and people likely increased the offenders’ confidence that they could continue the abuse undeterred,” which may explain “why the offenders themselves initiated contact with medical or law enforcement agencies at the time of intervention.”

In many high-profile child fatalities, including recent cases (such as the 5-year-old beaten to death by her father earlier this year in King County, Washington), it is evident that CPS caseworkers did not recognize that child torture was occurring, and may never have received more than superficial training on the subject. Child torture cases occur infrequently, and even experienced caseworkers may not have encountered a clear example of child torture before their assessment skills were tested by a case with an unfamiliar pattern of child maltreatment.

However, during recent years I have consulted on several child torture cases in Washington in which CPS caseworkers, or adoption caseworkers, had recognized indicators of child torture before contacting me for assistance in helping courts to understand this phenomenon. Many caseworkers in Washington have become better informed about child torture during recent years, in part because of cases in adoptive families and also because of a few high-profile fatalities such as the child torture cases mentioned above.

Schlatter, et al, comment that in hospital settings “we observed that questioning about psychological aspects of torture were often inadequate,” and this is true of CPS assessments as well. Washington State child abuse and neglect statutes lack a definition of emotional abuse and neglect, and the Keeping Families Together Act (KFTA) explicitly defines the standard for involuntary child removal as “risk of imminent physical harm.” This legal standard indicates a lack of understanding of child torture which always includes psychological maltreatment, as well as resistance to acknowledging that caregivers of all types can be guilty of torturing a child.

Washington State child abuse and neglect statutes should be revised to:

Include a definition of child torture;
Provide a definition of emotional abuse and neglect;
Revise the KFTA standard for child removal, including reworking the definition of ‘imminent harm’ to include a pattern of dehumanizing and terrorizing caregiving practices; and
Revise the dependency statute to remove the requirement of a reunification plan when there has been a legal finding that a caregiver has engaged in child torture.

Even when caseworkers recognize indicators of child torture, they may have difficulty gathering evidence necessary for court action when school age children do not disclose, or only partially reveal what has happened to them, or provide inconsistent accounts of parenting practices. Child victims may believe that to speak openly to authorities about the abuse they have suffered could endanger their lives, or at the very least, lead to harsh retribution. Caseworkers and law enforcement investigators should not expect full disclosure in a single interview until the child feels safe from further harm. The reluctance of children to talk honestly with investigators may prevent timely legal action when a child does not present with serious physical injury.

Even when there is ample evidence of child torture, caseworkers and other professionals may engage in denial that caregivers who appear sane and rational could force a child to eat vomit or feces, strangle or submerge a child underwater to the point of temporary asphyxiation, deliberately starve a child for months or years, pour boiling water on a child’s head, or beat a child for hours, and many other heinous actions. Until professionals in public agencies and courts cease the denial of child torture and work collaboratively on these cases in multi-disciplinary settings, child victims cannot be effectively protected.

References

“Federal Way man abused daughter, 5, to death,” Seattle Times, May 31, 2025.

Girgis, L., “Beacon Hill woman charged for allegedly beating her son, 14, to death,” Seattle Times, February 5, 2025.

Knox, B., Starling, S., Feldman, K., Kellogg, N., Frasier, L., & Tiapula, S., “Child Torture as a Form of Child Abuse,” (2014), Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma,” 7, pp. 37-49.

Schlatter, A., Wiester, R., Thompson, A., Gilbert, J., Forshag, T. & Feldman, K., “Child torture: A Washington state case series,” (2024), Child Abuse Review, 33, pp. 1-10.

Shelton, J., Hardie, J., Knox, B. & Burd, T., “Child Torture as a Form of Child Abuse: A Guide for Recognition and Response, “(2024), Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.

Shelton, J., Knox, B., Hardie, J., Burd, T., Hoffer, A. & Slater, K., “Child torture as a form of child abuse: An exploratory study of investigative aspects among 42 offenders,” (2024), Child Abuse and Neglect, 158, pp. 1-13.

Wilson, D., “The torture of children,” Sounding Board, March 2018.

See past Sounding Board commentaries

©Dee Wilson

deewilson13@aol.com