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xviii Introduction A seven-year-old boy comes into the hospital weighing 20 pounds, having not seen a doctor nor not gained any weight in several years. How and why did this happen? A four-month-old boy comes into the hospital to die from abuse. How was it that during his few months of life, more than 15 professionals in fi ve agencies failed to protect him? A mother receives the most dreaded call of all. Her infant son had stopped breathing at the babysitter’s home. He later dies from abusive head trauma. What can this mother’s unspeakable grief tell us about dev- astating sorrow and ultimate empowerment? All of my and my colleagues’ stories are true. I have tried diligently and I hope successfully to mask identifying details, while striving to preserve essential facts and concepts. Some stories, though, are drawn from public news and court records. This is true of Ricky, Logan, and Strider. These stories are not academic. They are, rather, deeply personal. It is this very personal view that I hope will project the reality of child abuse from our eyes to the readers. It is this view that hopefully will reveal not just what happened to these children but what these children and fami- lies can teach us about all children before they become damaged and sometimes damaging adults. This book is not intended to be a systematic review of either the his- tory or the science of child abuse. Nor is it intended as a critique of any system or individual. We all make mistakes. However, I honestly believe that everyone, parents and professionals alike, do their best with what they have. What Happened in the Woodshed is a book about good parents and bad, about good outcomes and bad, about perpetrators and victims, and, not least, about collateral victims, the family members who did not cause the abuse and the professionals who identify and treat the abuse. What Happened in the Woodshed is not just my story and that of my child abuse pediatrician colleagues, it is also the story of the emergence and development of child abuse pediatrics as a formal pediatric specialty in 2006. Ultimately though, What Happened in the Woodshed is for and about Danny. It is my attempt to bear witness to Danny’s story by way of other stories of abused children, to try to fathom who these children are, who their parents are, and, with as much precision as is medically possible, tell what happened to them in the many secret and silent homes in Amer- ica where children are abused and neglected every day.