Why has the trial of Lindsay Clancy garnered so much attention? It would be comforting to say that it is because her crimes are so heinous and rare. But the truth is they are not.
At the Lives Cut Short database, a joint project of the American Enterprise Institute and the University of North Carolina, we have collected almost 5,000 records of child maltreatment fatalities between 2022 and 2026. These are only a fraction of the total deaths from neglect and abuse that occurred during that time period, but the database gives us a window into these tragedies.
Almost half of those deaths (2,282) involved the biological mother of the child. And while many of them were the result of accidental circumstances like fentanyl poisonings, 912 involved “inflicted injury.” And just in case that wasn’t bad enough, we found 214 cases involving mothers whose children suffered “torture or prolonged maltreatment.”…