S1: Bonus EP 1 – Let's Go Back to 1974

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I listened intently to the podcast, and I thought about Matthew and Tracy Raquel, and I thought, had.

Matthew been thrown out of his crib in nineteen seventy four, seventy five instead of nineteen seventy one, I would suspect that the response would have been different.

I'm Nancy Glass that this is Burden of Guilt Bonus episode number one. Let's go back to nineteen seventy four. In nineteen seventy four, People magazine published its first issue with actress Mia Farrow on the cover. It was also the first time UPC codes appeared on packaged goods, and that summer, the Watergate scandal forced President Richard Nixon to resign, But a few months before that, he signed a groundbreaking piece of legislation, the Child's Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act

I think a lot of people pinpoint the interests in the history of child abuse to the nineteen sixty two article by c. Henry Kemp, who described a syndrome what you call the battered child syndrome, and this described a few cases of children who were intentionally hurt by the very people who were supposed to care for them, and this helped guide policy.

Doctor Kemp's revolutionary study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It shed light on something that had never really been in the public discussion before, child abuse. His research showed how parents would switch doctors, falsify medical histories, and express concern for injuries that they themselves had caused.

And these stories were heartbreaking and kind of shocking the idea that people were supposed to care for kids it might hurt them.

After doctor Camp's nineteen sixty two study recognized child's abuse as a medical condition, that's when change started to happen.

By the end of the sixties, every single state had passed a mandatory reporting law, which did not exist generally prior to that. Georgia, for instance, passed its first line nineteen sixty five, and state's contraveling together who should be reporting, what situation should be reported.

The state of Georgia, where Matthew Golder and his family lived, required doctors, nurses, and public welfare workers to report suspected abuse of children under the age of twelve to the police or any child welfare agency. But in Matthew's case, no one really questioned the story that he was found comatose.

Back in nineteen seventy one. Yeah, that somebody might think that a two year old could throw a baby with enough force to cause significant harm is certainly a misunderstanding of most things that are known n pdxent trauma, but also important to remember that in nineteen seventies, we didn't have specialists in child abuse who were limited in the testing that was done, and perhaps some embrace of this lack of knowledge, because sometimes not knowing fields better than

Jan Barry Sandlin ultimately was responsible for beating little Matthew and causing his death. I'm going to play some testimony that you didn't hear in the podcast earlier. It comes from doctor Joe Burton, who became the medical examiner in the county a few years after Matthew died. During Jan's second trial in nineteen ninety eight, doctor Burton was asked about his training and experience identifying child's abuse back in nineteen seventy one.

One first let me add that I had no exposure that I even recall in medical school about specifically child abuse. But I did when I was doing my fellowship in forensic pathology, because we were asked as pathologists to decide how people were injured children, adults, old people. But it

Let's talk about something else that absolutely floored me. The Dacab County corner listed Matthew's death as accidental. But here's the thing. That corner in nineteen seventy one had absolutely no medical training zero. Here's more testimony, doctor Burton.

Every county in the state of Georgia has an elected coroner, and in nineteen seventy one, the coroner had to be eighteen years of age and could never have been convicted of a felony. You could be the coroner if you ran and were elected, and the coroner had the power at least to determine what type of investigation might be done in a death. The coroner could write on the desertific it and still can a cause of death a

Doctor Burton was then asked if he was surprised Matthew's death was listed as accidental.

It's unfortunate but not surprising. There was no coordinated investigation of death in the cab County at that time. It was disjointed.

Unfortunate, but not surprising. That's tough to hear, but that's where things were at in nineteen seventy one and really question what happened because no one was trained to ask, and there was no coordinated effort to ask.

There was no correlation of data between the pathologists, police, the corner physicians in the hospitals. It was a very disorganized way to try to arrive at sometimes complex answers about what happened to someone.

It's hard to blame the system for failing Matthew because there really wasn't a system in place in nineteen seventy one to report child's abuse.

Nineteen seventies was a different time. You know, children would play on supervised, they wouldn't have a car seat. You had paint on the walls that had let in it. You know, the doctors would be smoking on rounds. Some of them might be smoking in the operating room. There was a lot less attention to safety and the impact on children for some of the choices that adults would make.

As doctor Roz said, it was a different time back then, especially when it came to reporting and identifying wild abuse.

Back in nineteen seventy one, there was only one state that had a hotline for reporting child abuse, and that was Florida.

Florida was also the first date to air public service announcements on the radio.

It's kind of similar to today. You know, if you see something saying something I really encouraging people that just by making this phone call they could help families immensely.

So that left families to handle allegations of abuse, and in this case, the family was far from functional.

I think back in that time, I'm sure that people were suspicious, but again, what do you do about it?

Colleen ghibli Reid is an assistant professor at the Camp Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect.

I imagine there was suspicion that something was going on by professionals involved with this family from the family members. That was kind of insinuated that family members kind of thought that something's just not right here. I think that back then people may have had suspicions but they're like, well, what do I do?

Who do I call?

What do I do? How do I get involved? Because there wasn't the aware of this, There wasn't the programs, there wasn't the campaigns. That just wasn't the case back then.

And that leads us back to what her colleague Lisa merkel Hogen said at the beginning of this episode.

I listened intently to the podcast, and I thought about Matthew and Tracy Raquel, and I thought, had Matthew been thrown out of his crib in nineteen seventy four, seventy five instead of nineteen seventy one, I would suspect that the response would have been different because there at least would have been an agency with a multidisciplinary team that would pull in the.

Coroner and the medical doctors and social workers and others to really take a deep dive into the injury and then ultimately his death.

If you remember, doctors found a third degree burn on Matthew's little foot, he had bruising on his body, and even what appeared to be an old fracture to his.

Clavical Now we have child abuse fatality reviews in all states as well, so when severe harm and death occurs. There is a multidisciplinary team of professionals in every state slash community that do a deep dive into what happened, and I suspect they would have found the burns and they would have used radiology to see the severe harm and the shattered bones that that young four month old cherub had.

If little Matthew Golder had been killed a couple of years later, the entire outcome of this story might have been different. That is a horrible, shocking and mind numbing thought. Barry Salmon might have been investigated and prosecuted well before nineteen ninety eight, and Tracy Raquel wouldn't have lived with a burden of guilt that she might have been responsible for her brother's death. Stay tuned for Burden of Guilt at documentary coming in twenty twenty four and airing only