There appears to be an interesting cultural approach to the issue
of interpersonal violence involving children: injury to children
caused by adults is generally acknowledged to be unacceptable
(and to represent non-accidental injury), but there seems to be a
reluctance to consider interpersonal injury between children in
the same way. This is perhaps underlined by the fact that many
of the nurses and doctors treating children who suffered injuries
in this way coded them as ‘‘accidental’’ (unintentional) for the purposes
of this study. It has to be acknowledged that the true intentions
of the perpetrators responsible for injuries to children in this
study were often not known – a young child who hits or pushes another
may be incapable of predicting the consequences of this action
in terms of the injury caused, and also incapable of
understanding the effects of this injury on the injured person. Similar
arguments and difficulties have permeated the legal approach
to children who commit crime. Traditionally in English law, a child
aged less than ten years is deemed incapable of committing a
crime (Cape, 1999).