Massachusetts Personal Injury Lawyer Blog

Children with TBI can become victims

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wants families with children suffering from traumatic brain injury to know that they can easily become victims. A traumatic brain injury is defined as a blow to the head or a penetrating head injury that disrupts the function of the brain, according to the CDC.

Unfortunately for those children suffering from TBI, they can become victims of violence. The CDC has put together a fact sheet for families to understand how this can happen and how to prevent it from happening to their children.

Victimization is harm caused on purpose and can happen anywhere, but people with disabilities are 4 to 10 times more likely to be victimized than people without disabilities. Children with disabilities are more than twice as likely to be victimized as children without them.

Victimization includes (CDC):

• • Physical violence with or without a weapon
• • Sexual violence of any kind including rape
• • Emotional abuse,including verbal attacks or being humiliated
• • Neglect of personal needs for daily life, including medical care or equipment

The most common places for this to happen are hospitals and at home and the victims usually know the person who harms them—a health care worker, intimate partner, or family member. More men than women cause harm to people and children with disabilities.