Innocents abused. A pediatric hospital forms a team to care for sexually maltreated children.

From its earliest days, Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis has been a protector of and advocate for abused children. As "battered child syndrome" began to emerge as a social and medical problem, the staff developed a child abuse protocol to improve the management of "nonaccidental" injuries to children. By 1982 the number of children brought in to the emergency room with sexual abuse complaints was averaging more than 250 a year. Some complaints did not warrant emergency priority. These were cases in which the last sexual abuse incident had occurred days, weeks, months, or years earlier. In March 1983 the hospital established the Special Assessment and Management (SAM) Clinic with a part-time staff that met with patients two mornings a week. Since it opened, the clinic has evaluated and followed up on more than 4,000 patients. The growth of the SAM Clinic meant the hospital had to develop clinical services for the increasing patient load and develop staff as specialists in a field that was itself evolving. Cardial Glennon became the first hospital in the St. Louis area to videotape patient interviews and use the colposcope in medical examinations. The hospital also pioneered the use of anatomically correct dolls when interviewing patients.