Brandt Steele, 97; Studied Child Abuse
LA Times
Dr. Brandt F. Steele, a psychiatrist and pioneer in the treatment of child abuse victims who helped coin the term “battered child,” has died.
Steele, 97, died of natural causes Jan. 19.
In a 1962 paper, Steele and longtime associate Dr. C. Henry Kempe, a pediatrician, became the first to detail the physical and psychological symptoms of child abuse by parents, dubbing the result “battered child syndrome.”
The paper, which documented 300 cases of abuse, was pronounced one of the 20th century’s 50 most important medical contributions by the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
Steele and Kempe were the first to document that abusers themselves often were childhood victims of abuse and neglect.
