It’s official – Fayette County child neglect issue has doubled in the span of a year.
The Indiana Department of Child Services released its final 2015 statistics for child neglect and child physical and sexual abuse last week, with those figures showing an all-time high for Fayette County when it comes to child neglect.
The county had 11 substantiated cases of child neglect in December 2015, bringing its overall 2015 total to 151 cases – a 96 percent increase over its 2014 figure of 77 such cases and a 277 percent increase since 2012, when the county had only 40 substantiated cases of child neglect.
Child neglect, as defined by the state of Indiana, is when a “child’s physical or mental condition is seriously impaired or seriously endangered as a result of the parent, guardian, or custodian being unable, refusing, or neglecting to supply the child with necessary food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, or supervision.”
The final December 2015 statistics also marked 11 out of 12 months during the year in which Fayette County had double-digits in substantiated child neglect cases, while also placing the county as the second-highest in DCS Region 12 for December 2015, only behind Wayne County.
Many see the correlation between the rise in child neglect cases and drug arrests within Fayette County, as Fayette Circuit Judge Beth Butsch last year – at a Child Abuse Awareness Month Ceremony on the courthouse lawn – said the majority of such cases involved illegal drug abuse on the part of the parents or guardians. That has been echoed at the state level as well, with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence announcing plans in August 2015 to hire more than 100 more DCS caseworkers to help with the increased caseload, attributed in part to the increase in drug abuse statewide.
Another area where 2015’s final figures surpassed 2014 for Fayette County is the area of child sexual abuse.The county had two substantiated cases of child sexual abuse reported in December 2015, bringing the county’s total for the year to 13, marking a 116.6 percent increase from 2014’s figure of six cases.
The county did not have any substantiaed cases of child physical abuse for December.
Overall, the state had a total of 2,045 substantiated cases of child neglect, 262 substantiated cases of physical abuse and 232 substantiated cases of child sexual abuse in December 2015, according to DCS.