Child abuse statistics
In the USA:
- A report of child abuse is made every 10 seconds.
- Every year referrals to state child protective services involve 6.6 million children, and around 3.2 million of those children are subject to an investigated report.
And the impacts are devastating:
- Between four and seven children die each day because of abuse and neglect.
- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention links adverse childhood experiences (which include other household dysfunctions along with abuse and neglect) with a range of long-term health impacts. Individuals who reported six or more adverse childhood experiences had an average life expectancy two decades shorter than those who reported none.
- As many as two-thirds of the people in treatment for drug abuse reported being abused or neglected as children.
- Fourteen percent of all men in prison and 36% of women in prison were abused as children.
- For new cases in 2008 alone, lifetime estimates of lost worker productivity, health care costs, special education costs, child welfare expenditures and criminal justice expenditures added up to $124 billion.
The number of children MCAP serves is climbing – from 381 in 2015 to 654 in 2017. That’s a 72% increase. With the opioid crisis, insufficient medical, behavioral and financial supports for families, and the rise in child trafficking in the county, we expect this upward trend to continue.
All statistics from https://www.childhelp.org/child-abuse-statistics