Prologue : Danny: What Happened in the Woodshed? In 1984, just as I was beginning my career as a child abuse pediatrician, I spoke at a public library about the medical diagnosis of child abuse. The audience was small, maybe 15 people, surrounded by row after row of children’s books. Some in the audience were child welfare professionals, some were nonprofessional community members. All were there, I hoped, to learn about child abuse and, in particular, about my new program— the Pediatric Forensic Clinic. I described how that program would help protect children by providing an accurate medical diagnosis, sometimes fi nding that a child had been abused and making sure the child was pro- tected, sometimes fi nding that a child had not been abused and saving the family from further investigation. Afterward, as I prepared to leave, a well-dressed, elderly woman approached me. Tall and thin, with grey hair and a sad, wrinkled face, she stood rigidly, her eyes fi xed on the fl oor. In a halting whisper, she told me a story I would never forget. When her son Danny was a toddler and misbehaved, as toddlers often do, her now deceased husband would roughly haul him into the wood- shed. This happened often, sometimes daily. After a time, Danny and his father would come back. But on returning, her usually noisy, rambunc- tious son would be quiet and withdrawn. He would sometimes whimper, sometimes cower. He would, more often than not, curl into his mother’s lap and quietly fall asleep. Sometimes, he slept for an interminably long
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