December 13, 2023 • 12 mins
If this case happened after 1974, would there have been a different outcome? In this bonus episode, we explore that question with some background on the groundbreaking legislation known as CAPTA (Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act). We also look at the history of people’s understanding and perception of child abuse.
If you would like to reach out to the Burden of Guilt Team, email us at burdenofguiltpod@gmail.com
If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic abuse, please reach out and call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
To report a case of child abuse, please contact your local police department or call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1.800.422.4453.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
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
(00:54):
the first time UPC codes appeared on packaged goods, and
that summer, a 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,
known as KEPTA. KAPTA established a national definition of child
(01:18):
abuse and provided federal funding to each state to prevent, identify,
and treat abuse and neglect. So the question is why
did it take so long for the federal government to
put rules in place. I pose that question to doctor
Mihail Ross, a physician and professor in public policy and
(01:39):
health at the University of Rochester.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
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
he called 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
(02:02):
this helped guide policy.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
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,
(02:24):
and express concern for injuries that they themselves had caused.
X rays confirmed what no one wanted to believe. Parents
and foster parents were beating and sometimes killing their own children,
often under the age of three.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
And these stories were heartbreaking and kind of shocking the
idea that people were supposed to care for kids it
might hurt them.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
After doctor Kemp's nineteen sixty two study recognized child abuse
as a medical condition, that's when change started to happen.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
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 contravering together who should be
reporting what situation should be reported.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
The state of Georgia, where Matthew Golder and his family lived,
require 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.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
In nineteen seventy one. The idea 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 in 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
(03:56):
lack of knowledge, because sometimes not knowing feels better than
really looking at what is terribly disturbing and seeing that
as it is.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Jan Berry 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
(04:30):
about his training and experience identifying child's abuse back in
nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
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
was very minimal back at that time. So in the
(04:58):
last two decades a this amount of information has been
brought forward about all types of child abuse, about radiographic
changes that are present in child abuse cases, about interpreting
patterns of injury, and mainly about making health care providers
more aware of cases where child abuse may exist.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
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 from doctor Burton.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
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
(06:00):
manner of death in this case. The Cab County in
the early nineteen seventies utilized the fulling county medical examiners
doctors just to do autopsies, so there was no real
investigation of death.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Doctor Burton was then asked if he was surprised Matthew's
death was listed as accidental.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
It's unfortunate, but not surprising. There was no coordinated investigation
of death in the Cab County at that time.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
It was disjointed, unfortunate, but not surprising. That's tough to hear,
but that's where things were at in nineteen seventy one.
No one really questioned what happened because no one was
trained to ask, and there was no coordinated effort to ask.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
There was no correlation of data between the pathologists, police,
the coroner, physicians in the hospitals. It was a very
disorganized way to try to arrive at sometimes complex answers
about what happened to someone.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
It's hard to blame the system failing Matthew because there
really wasn't a system in place in nineteen seventy one
to report child abuse.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
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 lead 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.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
As doctor Roz said, it was a different time back then,
especially when it came to reporting and identifying child's abuse.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Back in nineteen seventy one, there was only one state
that had a hotline for reporting child abuse, and that
was Florida.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Florida was also the first date to air public service
announcements on the radio.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So that left families to allegations of abuse, and in
this case, the family was far from functional.
Speaker 5 (08:06):
I think back in that time, I'm sure that people
were suspicious, but again, what do you do about it?
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Colleen ghibli Reid is an assistant professor at the Camp
Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
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?
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Who do I call?
Speaker 5 (08:40):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Back then, And that leads us back to what her
colleague Lisa merkel Hogen said at the beginning of this episode.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
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
(09:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
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.
Speaker 6 (09:49):
Now, we have child abuse fatality reviews in all states
as well, so when severe harm and death occurs, there
is a 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
(10:10):
they would have used radiology to see the severe harm
and the shattered bones that that young four month old
jerub had.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
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.
Jane Barry Sanlin might have been investigated and prosecuted well
before nineteen ninety eight, and Tracy Raquel wouldn't have lived
(10:43):
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
(11:07):
only on Paramount Plus. If you would like to reach
out to the Burden of Guilt team, email us at
burdenofguiltpod at gmail dot com. That's Burden of Guilt pod
at gmail dot com. If you or someone you know
is worried about maltreatment or suspect that a child is
being abused or neglected, call the Child Help National Child
(11:31):
Abuse Hotline. You can call or text one eight hundred
four a child. That's one eight hundred four two two
four four five three. One way to show support is
by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts and don't
forget to rate and review Burden of Guilt. Five star
(11:53):
reviews go a long way, A big thank you for listening,
and also be sure to check us out and follow
us on Instagram at Glass Podcasts. Burden of Guilt is
a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group,
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is hosted and
(12:14):
executive produced by me Nancy Glass. This episode was written
and produced by Todd Gantz. Our iHeart team is Ali
Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Special thanks to Tracy Riquel Burns
and her husband part Audio editing and mixing by Matt
Delvecchio and Nico Aruca. Burden of Guilt's theme composed by
(12:36):
Oliver Baines. Music library provided by my Music and For
more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts,
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.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
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
(00:54):
the first time UPC codes appeared on packaged goods, and
that summer, a 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,
known as KEPTA. KAPTA established a national definition of child
(01:18):
abuse and provided federal funding to each state to prevent, identify,
and treat abuse and neglect. So the question is why
did it take so long for the federal government to
put rules in place. I pose that question to doctor
Mihail Ross, a physician and professor in public policy and
(01:39):
health at the University of Rochester.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
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
he called 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
(02:02):
this helped guide policy.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
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,
(02:24):
and express concern for injuries that they themselves had caused.
X rays confirmed what no one wanted to believe. Parents
and foster parents were beating and sometimes killing their own children,
often under the age of three.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
And these stories were heartbreaking and kind of shocking the
idea that people were supposed to care for kids it
might hurt them.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
After doctor Kemp's nineteen sixty two study recognized child abuse
as a medical condition, that's when change started to happen.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
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 contravering together who should be
reporting what situation should be reported.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
The state of Georgia, where Matthew Golder and his family lived,
require 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.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
In nineteen seventy one. The idea 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 in 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
(03:56):
lack of knowledge, because sometimes not knowing feels better than
really looking at what is terribly disturbing and seeing that
as it is.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Jan Berry 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
(04:30):
about his training and experience identifying child's abuse back in
nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
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
was very minimal back at that time. So in the
(04:58):
last two decades a this amount of information has been
brought forward about all types of child abuse, about radiographic
changes that are present in child abuse cases, about interpreting
patterns of injury, and mainly about making health care providers
more aware of cases where child abuse may exist.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
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 from doctor Burton.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
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
(06:00):
manner of death in this case. The Cab County in
the early nineteen seventies utilized the fulling county medical examiners
doctors just to do autopsies, so there was no real
investigation of death.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Doctor Burton was then asked if he was surprised Matthew's
death was listed as accidental.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
It's unfortunate, but not surprising. There was no coordinated investigation
of death in the Cab County at that time.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
It was disjointed, unfortunate, but not surprising. That's tough to hear,
but that's where things were at in nineteen seventy one.
No one really questioned what happened because no one was
trained to ask, and there was no coordinated effort to ask.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
There was no correlation of data between the pathologists, police,
the coroner, physicians in the hospitals. It was a very
disorganized way to try to arrive at sometimes complex answers
about what happened to someone.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
It's hard to blame the system failing Matthew because there
really wasn't a system in place in nineteen seventy one
to report child abuse.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
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 lead 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.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
As doctor Roz said, it was a different time back then,
especially when it came to reporting and identifying child's abuse.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Back in nineteen seventy one, there was only one state
that had a hotline for reporting child abuse, and that
was Florida.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Florida was also the first date to air public service
announcements on the radio.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So that left families to allegations of abuse, and in
this case, the family was far from functional.
Speaker 5 (08:06):
I think back in that time, I'm sure that people
were suspicious, but again, what do you do about it?
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Colleen ghibli Reid is an assistant professor at the Camp
Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
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?
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Who do I call?
Speaker 5 (08:40):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Back then, And that leads us back to what her
colleague Lisa merkel Hogen said at the beginning of this episode.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
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
(09:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
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.
Speaker 6 (09:49):
Now, we have child abuse fatality reviews in all states
as well, so when severe harm and death occurs, there
is a 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
(10:10):
they would have used radiology to see the severe harm
and the shattered bones that that young four month old
jerub had.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
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.
Jane Barry Sanlin might have been investigated and prosecuted well
before nineteen ninety eight, and Tracy Raquel wouldn't have lived
(10:43):
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
(11:07):
only on Paramount Plus. If you would like to reach
out to the Burden of Guilt team, email us at
burdenofguiltpod at gmail dot com. That's Burden of Guilt pod
at gmail dot com. If you or someone you know
is worried about maltreatment or suspect that a child is
being abused or neglected, call the Child Help National Child
(11:31):
Abuse Hotline. You can call or text one eight hundred
four a child. That's one eight hundred four two two
four four five three. One way to show support is
by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts and don't
forget to rate and review Burden of Guilt. Five star
(11:53):
reviews go a long way, A big thank you for listening,
and also be sure to check us out and follow
us on Instagram at Glass Podcasts. Burden of Guilt is
a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group,
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is hosted and
(12:14):
executive produced by me Nancy Glass. This episode was written
and produced by Todd Gantz. Our iHeart team is Ali
Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Special thanks to Tracy Riquel Burns
and her husband part Audio editing and mixing by Matt
Delvecchio and Nico Aruca. Burden of Guilt's theme composed by
(12:36):
Oliver Baines. Music library provided by my Music and For
more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts,
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