Hi
I'm having some trouble with the statistics that tasha cited.
On Sat, 29 Dec 2001, tasha howe wrote:
> regardless of how many cases of sexual abuse are fabricated (the
> research on court cases shows about 2% of children are lying or making
> it up, meaning 98% of children are telling the truth), this kind of
> discussion always takes people's minds off the reality of child abuse.
> The truth is, there are over 3 million cases per year in this country
> alone that are DOCUMENTED.
What is the basis for the 3,000,000 cases of child abuse per
year, and (given the article that prompted this debate), what
proportion of that represents child sexual abuse? Or was the
3,000,000 for child sexual abuse? This just sounds like much too
high a figure. After writing this, I realized that Tasha had
given a website link. The information there states:
"Each year 3 million reports of child abuse are recorded.
1,553,800 were substantiated in 1993. It is estimated that only
1/3 of abuse cases are ever reported to authorities. Researchers
estimate that 25% of children have been abused or neglected in
some way. Of the 1.5 million substantiated cases, 217,700 were
cases of sexual abuse, 338,900 were physical neglect, 212,800
were emotional neglect, and 381,700 were physical abuse. 565,000
children were seriously injured by their parents."
So the DOCUMENTED appears to refer to a report of child abuse,
and about half of that number were SUBSTANTIATED in 1993. No
source for the stats was available, so my original question still
stands. The explanation also clarifies that about 15% of cases
of child abuse were sexual abuse, which appears generally
consistent with the idea that sexual abuse constitutes a small
proportion of all cases of abuse. The last sentence above is
somewhat difficult to interpret ... does "seriously injured"
refer only to bodily harm? If so, it appears inconsistent with
the preceding classifications unless virtually every case of
physical abuse involved serious injury.
Tasha's site goes on to mention:
"There are no racial/ethnic differences in rates of maltreatment.
78% of abused children are harmed by their biological parents
(75% by mothers; 46% by fathers). Children of single parents are
80% more likely to be harmed than children in 2-parent homes.
Children who live in poverty are 22 times more likely to be
harmed than middle class children."
Given the strong relationship between race/ethnicity and poverty
in the USA, I wonder how there can be no racial/ethnicity
differences when children in poverty are 22 times more at risk,
unless the statistics reported are controlling for contaminating
variables.
Tasha goes on to state in her posting:
> 2000 children per year are SUBSTANTIATED as
> killed by parents.
I have trouble believing this figure, although 2,000 would still
represent a very small number out of the many millions of
children in the USA. But elsewhere Linda Woolf noted that:
>And now, let us look at the U.S.:
>Total homicides: 15,533
Putting these figures together would mean that 13% of all murders
were parents killing their children. Surely parents killing
their children must be a pretty exceptional kind of murder, and
rarer than this? I would be interested in the source of the
2,000 murders per year. Or is there some important difference
between "being killed by" and "homicide?"
Best wishes
Jim
============================================================================
James M. Clark (204) 786-9757
Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax
University of Winnipeg 4L05D
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark
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