Data on Child Abuse Essay

Children for their limited consciousness are freed from many responsibilities. Alike, they are deprived of many rights and, what is more, they are restricted in their capabilities and thus make up a vulnerable group easy to be abused by others. The society is often blind to the seriousness of the problem, and ignores the facts talking of how frequent child abuse is within homes and out of them. But it everyone opens his or her eyes and looks at the figures related to the child abuse in our days, we all will understand how far we are gone and how urgent preventive measures are now.

The first and most frightening statistics we should think of refers to the amounts of child fatality due to the abuse in everyday life. As Jackie Turton (2008) has investigated, about 5 children per day die as victims of child abuse and at least 3 out of 4 are under 14, and the number is tragically growing. In 2008 it was almost twice of the statistics of 1988, and with economic crisis the situation got even aggravated. In 2008, according to the estimated data, 1,730 children died as a result of abuse. In other words, 2.33 out of 100,000 children die from abuse in the USA. At the same time, 60-85% of fatal abuse cases are not reported at death certificates. It means that the true reasons are reasonably withheld by parents and those to blame go scot-free.

Further, things are not much better with children who do survive and enter adult life because those adults who were abused in their early years are more likely to become criminals. By the data presented Appel (2009), the rate of juvenile criminals who have experienced child abuse is 59% higher than those who had no such fate. Then, abused are 28% more probable to be arrested in future life with 30% higher risk of committing violent crime. In the US 14% of all imprisoned men and 31% of imprisoned women were abused in childhood. This statistics should be obligatory taken to account because these figures show the effect of child abuse on the entire society, and the most crucial fact is that 30% of abused will do the same with their own children, and thus this cycle will never stop if no one interferes.

Lastly, we know that there are different kinds of child abuse, including physical (22%), emotional (4%) and sexual abuse (8%). The sexual abuse, as stated by Crosson-Tower’s study (2008), is lower in rate than physical abuse, but the effect of the first is even more traumatic and blatant. Sexual abuse is the most difficult to cope with for a person.

From 15% to 25% of female and from 5% to 15% of male experienced sexual abuse in childhood. By statistics, the abusers are mostly children’s relatives (30%) or people close to the family (60%) including neighbors and baby sitters. 10% of sexual abusers are strangers. As we see, the most important thing is not to prevent children from contacts with unknown people, but to eliminate the risk within family and control the relationships and mental health of caretakers thoroughly.

We can’t stay indifferent to this statistics, because we are all involved and in this or that way we are all affected by it.

The reasons must be studied better and everyone should contribute to get rid of those motives.