Severe brain and physical damage to a baby can result from just one fierce episode of shaking.
The European Conference on Shaken Baby Syndrome, staged in Edinburgh at the end of May, highlighted that this form of child abuse is difficult to diagnose and therefore often remains undetected.
Defensive stories
Research carried out in New York state reveals that 75 per cent of perpetrators are parents. Of these, 60 per cent are fathers or father figures, namely stepfathers or boyfriends. The average age of the victims is five months. Only since the early 1960s has this form of child abuse been officially recognised. It was first called 'battered child syndrome'
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