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Child Abuse and Neglect

Decent Essays

Child Abuse
Child abuse and neglect is frightfully high. As a country this is unacceptable. We need to come up with better ways to fight this “disease” before we destroy our children, our future.
An estimated 903,000 children across the country were victims of abuse or neglect in 2001, according to national data released by the Department of Health and Human Services. The statistics indicate that about 12.4 out of every 1,000 children were victims of abuse or neglect, a rate comparable to the previous year's victimization rate of 12.2 out of 1,000 children.
"A nation as compassionate as ours should ensure that no child is a victim of abuse or neglect. The number of children that are being abused and neglected this country is an …show more content…

This problem has, because of more resources and ability to come forward, gone down in the past few years. For the same reason in the mid – eighties and early nineties it was up. Before then few came forward, then it was encouraged and more did. In 1994, over 3 million (3,140,000) children were reported for child abuse and neglect to child protective service (CPS) agencies in the United States. This figure represents a 4.5% increase over the number of children reported in 1993. Experts attribute much of the recent increase in reporting to greater public awareness of and willingness to report child maltreatment, as well as changes in how states collected or defined a reportable act of maltreatment (Wiese & Daro, 1995). Currently, about 47 out of every 1,000 children are reported as victims of child maltreatment. Overall, child abuse reporting levels have increased 63% between 1985 and 1994.

In 1994, 1,036,000 children were substantiated by CPS as victims of child maltreatment. This represents 16 out of every 1,000 U.S. children. According to the 1994 survey, physical abuse represented 21% of confirmed cases, sexual abuse 11%, neglect 49%, emotional maltreatment 3% and other forms of maltreatment 16%. These percentages have remained fairly stable since 1986 when approximately 27% of the children were reported for physical abuse, 16% for

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