A new study reveals that despite federal efforts to curb sexual and physical abuse incidences, the rate is still increasing while child neglect cases remained at 75 percent of the cases reported, according to the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine.
Anne Petersen, lead author of the report and chairwoman of the committee described child abuse as a destructive social dilemma. The impact and long-term consequences of child abuse to the victim, their families and the society is a public health problem.
Statistics from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) specify that more than three million referrals for child abuse and neglect are received by the child protective services every year. Other sources reported that in 2011, the child protective services received 676,569 children who were victims of physical, sexual, psychological abuses and medical or other types of neglect. One-fourth of which have been previously victimized, 1,545 died because of the abuse or neglect, and most of them are younger than four years old.
To better picture it, the report says 17.2 out of 1,000 children suffer from child neglect.
Devastatingly, 80 percent of the abusers are the children’s parents. About 88 percent of which are biological parents and majority of them are the mothers.
NCANDS statistics reported that child sexual abuse decreased to 62 percent since 1992, noting the greatest decrease during the late 90s. The downward trend continued with a three percent decrease between 2009 and 2010.
Petersen listed the probable causes of parents doing child abuse or neglect to their children include addiction, personal history of abuse and neglect, and depression. Other factors are stress and poverty.
The committee recommends a creation of a national surveillance system that will consolidate all the data from different sources to develop a better agenda to fight child abuse and neglect.
