In 1962, Kempe and his colleagues, including Brandt F. Steele and Henry Silver, published the paper "The Battered-Child Syndrome",[3][4] which led to the identification and recognition by the medical community of child abuse.
[1] After that plan went awry, Kempe later escaped to England via the Kindertransport project and ended up in the United States all by himself, in a Los Angeles orphanage for Jewish immigrant refugees.
[1] Specializing in the study of virology, Kempe helped develop Vaccinia immune globulin to counter the adverse effects of the smallpox vaccine.
In 1956, Kempe became the youngest chairman of the pediatrics department at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver, where he would spend the rest of his career.
He demanded a better diagnostic investigation of the unexplained and life-threatening injuries observed in children at four different hospital emergency rooms: shattered bones, inflicted burns, and brain damage.