Mandated reporting: a policy without reason.

About 40 years ago, Denver pediatrician C. Henry Kempe and his colleagues (1962) “discovered” the battered child syndrome. Although I did not have the privilege of knowing Kempe, I have enough friends who did that I am certain that he was thoughtful, caring, and charismatic. Even without those first-hand accounts, however, this picture could easily have been discerned from Kempe’s influence. As the principal founder of the International Society for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, the Kempe Children’s Center, and Child Abuse & Neglect The International Journal, Kempe has had a remarkable legacy: a worldwide movement of professionals concerned with the safety of children. Kempe’s most extraordinary influence, however, may have been in public policy. He and his colleagues had concluded that child maltreatment in the United States was a problem annually affecting a few hundred children subjected to the violent behavior of some seriously disturbed parents. Therefore, Kempe reached the conclusion that the best policy response would be to require health professionals to report those egregious cases to public authorities. In action that is probably without parallel in the history of US