Although child abuse can have devastating and long-lasting consequences, much of it goes unnoticed and unreported. Faith communities can make a difference. They have an important role to play in identifying, supporting and assisting children who have been victimized by those in positions of trust.
An ancient African proverb states “It takes a village to raise a child.” How true this remains in today’s fast-paced, high-tech world. Children can be exposed to violence and abuse in so many venues of their daily lives, but, unfortunately, the most common venue for child abuse is the home. In the place where the safety and well-being of vulnerable children should be most protected they can be subjected to myriad forms of abuse. We sometimes hear of cases where, for example, children have died in a house fire after being left unattended or have been kept locked in closets or cages for periods of time. These cases are severe enough to come to the attention of the media and communities often react with shock and outrage. Over time, however, people forget, and we go back to being complacent about issues of social justice.
Children need the protection of everyone around them – of the entire village. To that end, every jurisdiction in North America has mandatory child abuse and neglect reporting laws. In a 1999 address, Rev. Ray Hammond of Bethel, Massachusetts said: “…children are our gift, our inheritance, our awesome responsibility. They are bright and beautiful and full of potential…As adults, we must do everything we can to secure their future.”
Canada Statistics:
- One-third of Canadians reported experiencing childhood physical and/or sexual abuse or witnessing a parent acting violently toward another adult.
- Physical abuse is the most common form of child maltreatment, reported by 26% of Canadians.
- Men aged 15 and older reported childhood physical abuse more often (31%) than women (22%), while women were three times more likely than men to report childhood sexual abuse (12% versus 4%)
- 66% of the victims reported they were abused between 1 and 6 times
- 20% reported being abused between 7 and 21 instances
- 15% reported being abused more than that.
- 93% of childhood physical and/or sexual abuse survivors did not speak to police or child protection before they were 15 years old. And about 67% of the victims did not speak to anyone,not even family or friends.
- 54% of female victims of child sexual abuse indicated that their abuser was a non-relative
- 40% of Aboriginal people were victims of childhood physical and/or sexual abuse, compared to the 29% of non-Aboriginal people.
- 16% of victims of violent crime in Canada are children and youth under 18 years old.
- Under one year of age, 84% of the time the perpetrator of the violent crime was a parent
- In 2009 the data collected from the police indicated 85% of the incidents of children and youth under the age 18 were sexually victimized or physically assaulted by someone they knew.
(Statistics Canada, 2015)
- The Red Cross reported, a study in Ontario found 31% of males and 21% of females experienced physical abuse during their childhood.
- 85% of sexual abuse victims know their sexual abusers.
- In British Columbia, more than one in three street or marginalized youth have been sexually exploited by men and women; men were as likely as females to be exploited (Canadian Red Cross Statistics, 2006)
- Physical child abuse will increase with the frequency and severity of the domestic violence between the child’s parents (Neilson, 2017).
- Even though, child sexual abuse has decreased in Canada, there is still high rates of corporal punishment. A survey conducted indicated that 60% of the people agree with disciplining children by spanking. The issue does not end there as the majority of child homicides are committed by parents that start with physical abuse (Nunn and Robinson, 2018).
U.S Statistics:
- In 2014, regarding corporal punishment 70% of the adults agreed on disciplining children by “a good, hard spanking” (Nunn and Robinson, 2018).
- In the first 12 months of 2011, 41.2% of children from the ages 0 to 17 years were physically assaulted.
- 69.7% of the U.S population of 14 to 17-year old’s have been assaulted.
- 56.6% had experienced property victimization.
- 41.2% had been maltreated and 27.4% had been sexually victimized in their lifetime
- Of the children that were maltreated in 2012, 36.6% the mother was the perpetrator; 18.7% of the cases were of the father, and 12% the perpetrator was not the parent.
- An estimation of 1,593 children died due to maltreatment in 2012.
- 44% of those children were under a year old;
- 80% the fatalities were done by the child’s parent;
- 27.1% of the fatalities were by the mother alone.
- As violence against women became more severe and frequent, children experienced a 300% increase in risk of being physically abused (M. Straus & R. Gelles, 2012).
- 39.2% of the children surveyed had witnessed an act of violence in 2012.
- 54.5% of the children stated they were victims of physical assault during their lifetime (Victims of Crime, 2015).
- Rates of child maltreatment in the US have been consistent in the last few years. However, as of 2016 the rates for child maltreatment have been considerably lower than in 1990 when, they went down from 13 incidents per 1,000 children to 9 per 1,000 (Child Trends, 2018)
