What did the speaker probably talk about previously?

Another problem with children involved is child abuse. Child abuse covers a wide range of parental actions that result in harm being inflicted on children of all ages. The kind of abuse, however, varies with age. Infants and pre-school children are most likely to suffer deliberately inflicted fractures, burns, and bruises. This is known as the battered-child syndrome, first identified during the 1960s. Historically, reported cases of sexual abuse, ranging from molestation to incest, primarily involve male perpetrators and school-aged or adolescent female victims. More recently, however, a growing number of pre-school victims and male victims have been identified.
    Some states have broadened their statutory definitions of abuse to specifically include emotional or mental injury. Constant parental rejection, for example, can permanently cripple a child’s personality.
    Perhaps the most prevalent type of abuse is neglect — that is, physical or emotional harm resulting from their failure to provide children with adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, and moral training. A common consequence of neglect among young children is underfeeding; an undernourished infant often fails to thrive and may even die. In the age range between eight and 17 years, neglect, as opposed to physical or sexual abuse, was involved in about 70 percent of all validated reports of child mistreatment in the U.S. in a recent year.