December 13, 2023 • 13 mins
Burden of Guilt has been turned into a docuseries, now streaming only on Paramount+. Available to watch HERE!
And make sure to binge all episodes of the podcast that inspired the show before you watch!
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.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, all, we have some exciting news to share. Paramount
Plus has turned Burden of Guilt into a docuseries. You
will get to meet the people involved, You'll hear from
the people who have never spoken before, and you get
to see where the story took place. We are so
proud and excited to share it with you. You can
(00:20):
stream it right now on Paramount Plus.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I listened intently to the podcast, and I thought about
Matthew and Tracy Raquel, and I thought, had.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
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 1 (00:58):
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
(01:18):
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
known as KEPTA. KAPTA established a national definition of child
(01:42):
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 rob a physician and professor in public policy and
(02:03):
health at the University of Rochester.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
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
(02:26):
this helped guide policy.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
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,
(02:49):
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, in some sometimes killing their
own children, often under the age of three.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
And these stories were heartbreaking and kind of shocking the
idea that people were supposed to care for kids it
might hurt them.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
After doctor Camp's nineteen sixty two study recognized child's abuse
as a medical condition, that's when change started to happen.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
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.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
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
(04:20):
lack of knowledge, because sometimes not knowing fields better than
really looking at what is terribly disturbing and seeing that
as it is.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
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
(04:54):
about his training and experience identifying child's abuse back in
nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
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
was very minimal back at that time. So in the
(05:22):
last two decades, a tremendous 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 1 (05:42):
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.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
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
(06:24):
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 1 (06:36):
Doctor Burton was then asked if he was surprised Matthew's
death was listed as accidental.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
It's unfortunate but not surprising. There was no coordinated investigation
of death in the cab County at that time. It
was disjointed.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
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.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
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.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
As doctor Roz said, it was a different time back then,
especially when it came to reporting and identifying wild abuse.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Back in nineteen seventy one, there was only one state
that had a hotline for reporting child abuse, and that
was Florida.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Florida was also the first date to air public service
announcements on the radio.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
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 1 (08:22):
So that left families to handle allegations of abuse, and
in this case, the family was far from functional.
Speaker 6 (08:30):
I think back in that time, I'm sure that people
were suspicious, but again, what do you do about it?
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Colleen ghibli Reid is an assistant professor at the Camp
Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect.
Speaker 6 (08:44):
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 4 (09:03):
Who do I call?
Speaker 6 (09:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
And that leads us back to what her colleague Lisa
merkel Hogen said at the beginning of this episode.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
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
(09:40):
the response would have been different because there at least
would have been an agency with a multidisciplinary team that
would pull in the.
Speaker 7 (09:51):
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 1 (10:02):
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.
Speaker 7 (10:12):
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,
(10:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
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
(11:07):
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
(11:31):
on Paramount Plus. If you would like to reach out
to the Burden of Guilt team, email us at Burden
off Guiltpod 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
(11:55):
Child Abuse Hotline. You can call or text one eight
hundred for 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
(12:17):
star 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
(12:37):
is hosted and 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 Bart. Audio editing and
mixing by Matt Delvecchio and Nico Aruca. Burden of Guilt's
(12:59):
theme composed by 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.
Hi, all, we have some exciting news to share. Paramount
Plus has turned Burden of Guilt into a docuseries. You
will get to meet the people involved, You'll hear from
the people who have never spoken before, and you get
to see where the story took place. We are so
proud and excited to share it with you. You can
(00:20):
stream it right now on Paramount Plus.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I listened intently to the podcast, and I thought about
Matthew and Tracy Raquel, and I thought, had.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
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 1 (00:58):
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
(01:18):
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
known as KEPTA. KAPTA established a national definition of child
(01:42):
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 rob a physician and professor in public policy and
(02:03):
health at the University of Rochester.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
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
(02:26):
this helped guide policy.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
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,
(02:49):
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, in some sometimes killing their
own children, often under the age of three.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
And these stories were heartbreaking and kind of shocking the
idea that people were supposed to care for kids it
might hurt them.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
After doctor Camp's nineteen sixty two study recognized child's abuse
as a medical condition, that's when change started to happen.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
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.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
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
(04:20):
lack of knowledge, because sometimes not knowing fields better than
really looking at what is terribly disturbing and seeing that
as it is.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
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
(04:54):
about his training and experience identifying child's abuse back in
nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
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
was very minimal back at that time. So in the
(05:22):
last two decades, a tremendous 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 1 (05:42):
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.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
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
(06:24):
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 1 (06:36):
Doctor Burton was then asked if he was surprised Matthew's
death was listed as accidental.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
It's unfortunate but not surprising. There was no coordinated investigation
of death in the cab County at that time. It
was disjointed.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
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.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
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.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
As doctor Roz said, it was a different time back then,
especially when it came to reporting and identifying wild abuse.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Back in nineteen seventy one, there was only one state
that had a hotline for reporting child abuse, and that
was Florida.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Florida was also the first date to air public service
announcements on the radio.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
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 1 (08:22):
So that left families to handle allegations of abuse, and
in this case, the family was far from functional.
Speaker 6 (08:30):
I think back in that time, I'm sure that people
were suspicious, but again, what do you do about it?
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Colleen ghibli Reid is an assistant professor at the Camp
Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect.
Speaker 6 (08:44):
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 4 (09:03):
Who do I call?
Speaker 6 (09:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
And that leads us back to what her colleague Lisa
merkel Hogen said at the beginning of this episode.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
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
(09:40):
the response would have been different because there at least
would have been an agency with a multidisciplinary team that
would pull in the.
Speaker 7 (09:51):
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 1 (10:02):
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.
Speaker 7 (10:12):
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,
(10:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
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
(11:07):
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
(11:31):
on Paramount Plus. If you would like to reach out
to the Burden of Guilt team, email us at Burden
off Guiltpod 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
(11:55):
Child Abuse Hotline. You can call or text one eight
hundred for 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
(12:17):
star 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
(12:37):
is hosted and 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 Bart. Audio editing and
mixing by Matt Delvecchio and Nico Aruca. Burden of Guilt's
(12:59):
theme composed by 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.
Host
Nancy Glass
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