Barbara Bush Cites ‘Horror’ of Child Abuse

WASHINGTON —  Barbara Bush said Monday that child abuse is the nation’s most disturbing social problem.

“It shouldn’t hurt to be a child,” she said Monday at a White House reception marking April as Child Abuse Prevention Month.

Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan announced a campaign to draw public attention to the problem. Figures compiled by his department show that between 1,200 and 5,000 children die from abuse each year in the United States.

Children’s advocates said they welcomed the publicity, but more federal aid is needed as well.

Anne Cohn of the Chicago-based National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse said: “There’s a tremendous need for more money.”

Dr. Richard Krugman, professor of pediatrics who is acting dean at the University of Colorado Medical School, chaired a federal advisory panel on the problem. He said: “Hundreds of thousands of children are still being beaten and sodomized and raped. . . . It is an emergency.”

Mrs. Bush, addressing more than 100 children’s advocates in the East Room, called child abuse “a horror that’s been with us for centuries, even in this, the best of all possible countries.”