Hey friends, the Broken Cycle Media team and I are excited to offer a new series of educational episodes, which we're calling data points.

These special ad free episodes will include educational information, statistics and support on different topics that are important to our community.

Thank you so much for listening.

Child abuse is defined as the harm, mistreatment, neglect or coercive manipulation of a person under the age of 18.

Both adults and children can be perpetrators of child abuse, and the majority of child abuse is perpetuated by someone the child knows and trusts, like a parent or relative.

Abuse can be physical, mental, emotional, sexual, and or medical in nature.

This also includes neglect. Children who are victims of abuse are often afraid to report or disclose it, especially if their abuser is a close relative.

Relatedly, several studies done around the world have found various disclosure rates, which is the rate at which events of abuse are reported compared to how many events of abuse actually occur.

In one study, it suggested that one third of children who are victimized report it immediately, one third wait up to five years to report it, and the final one third either waits longer than five years or never reports at all.

The World Health Organization reports that three out of four children between the ages of two and four regularly suffer physical punishment and or psychological violence at the hands of their caregivers.

Another study proposes that 79% of abuse inflicted by a female abuser will remain unreported indefinitely.

It has also been found that the average age of victim reports childhood sexual abuse is 52 years old.

There are many factors that can affect the results of these studies beyond non-reporting.

Some studies are self-restricting because they only discuss adult to child abuse rather than including peer inflicted abuse as well.

All of the studies that will be mentioned in these episodes will be linked in the episode notes.

Another factor is whether victims of abuse are being interviewed as children or retrospectively as adults.

Other studies only include statistics about the incidents of contact abuse omitting non-physical contact abuse altogether.

All of these and many more remain to be factors that affect the proposed incident of abuse.

Considering only the cases that are reported, the CDC states that one billion children ages two to 17 experience violence each year.

In the same study, it was found that 64% of children in Asia, 56% of children in North America, 50% of children in Africa, 34% of children in Latin America, and 12% of children in Europe have faced severe physical violence or abuse in the last year as well.

One in five women and one in 13 men report having been sexually abused as a child.

Despite it being relatively impossible to calculate the real number of childhood abuse victims, there are signs and symptoms to be wary of.

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