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April 19, 2005
For the ChildrenTM
The 2003 Child Maltreatment statistics are out, and it ain't pretty.
In 2003, state child protective services reported 2.9 million reports of neglect or abuse, of which 906,000 were substantiated. The 2003 "victimization rate" of 12.4 victims per 1,000 U.S. children is comparable to those of previous years.
Bear in mind that 'substantiated' only means that the report was received & investigated properly, and that there was enough evidence of abuse found to start some type of proceedings. It does not mean that all of the unsubstantiated reports weren't abuse.
The breakdown of the types of abuse are similar to what I've seen in my practice:
About 63 percent of child victims suffered neglect, 19 percent were abused physically, and 10 percent were abused sexually. Infants and toddlers had the highest victimization rates.
Those figures aren't broken down further, but it's been my experience that the majority of the first two types are directly correlated to drug/alcohol addiction of the parent(s). Some enterprising person in the field should do a statistical study of the correlation between meth use & incidents of child abuse. I suspect the results would be quite shocking.
Shocking too are the results which show an increase in deaths from abuse.
The new maltreatment report shows that the number of child fatalities has grown from 1,100 in 1999 to 1,500 in 2003. Almost 79 percent of these deaths occurred before a child's third birthday.
This number has been steadily increasing over 4 years. It is unknown if this is because of better reporting by doctors or an actual increase in deaths.
Makes you wonder why funding for children's services, which is woefully inadequate at best, is always one of the first affected when states' governments need to make funding cuts, doesn't it? Or even worse, why a state privatizes its children's services instead of reforming its own agency.
It would almost make you think that politicians say one thing and do another.
Posted by Rita at April 19, 2005 05:43 AM