This Monday, March 25, the Shaken Baby Day took place, featuring several conferences at the Mediterranean University Center.
Monday, March 25, 2024, marked the Shaken Baby Day at the Mediterranean University Center. During this day, several conferences were held to raise awareness about shaken baby syndrome.
So what is shaken baby syndrome? “It involves lesions between the brain and the skull caused by a whiplash effect when shaken,” explains Professor and neurosurgeon Jean Sébastien Raul. When the baby is shaken, it causes the tearing of small veins on the brain’s surface, leading to bleeding within the skull.
Dr. Anne Laurent Vannier reveals that many victims are shaken not because the crying is incessant, but due to a desire to stop the crying because it is bothersome and the adult is unavailable. She indicates there is a confusion between wanting to shake and actually shaking, “It’s not normal to not feel like shaking a baby; however, it is quite different from the act of shaking, and not everyone can do it”.
What do the perpetrators risk?
Anne Valérie Thob, an inspector of serious bodily injuries, indicated that the perpetrators of this violence are 55% men and 45% women. In her study, she reveals that most shaken babies are not prone to crying excessively. It should be noted that the average life expectancy of a serious bodily harm victim is 14 years.
There is a great disparity in sentences, which can go up to 15 years. However, sentences are more likely to be around 5 to 10 years of imprisonment. Sentences are 73% pronounced by the correctional court and 27% by the criminal court or assizes, if there is death. The profiles that emerge are of people associated with alcoholism or with a dependency on substances. Increasingly, profiles are becoming linked to video games. “There is frustration when the child cries while the adult is playing video games,” states inspector Anne Valérie Thob.
