Jimmy Savile assaulted children as young as 10, report reveals, German Bishops Cancel Study Into Sexual Abuse by Priests, Rape Has a Purpose – Oppression

Jimmy Savile assaulted children as young as 10, report reveals
Police gather evidence of over 200 crimes in institutions visited by DJ, including children’s hospice
Sandra Laville and Josh Halliday  The Guardian, Thursday 10 January 2013

Jimmy Savile sexually assaulted children as young as 10 during nearly four decades of activity as a paedophile that took place in a string of institutions, including numerous hospitals, prisons and the BBC, the official inquiry by the Metropolitan police and the NSPCC will say on Friday.

The 30-page report, Giving Victims a Voice, will describe how the celebrity abused up to 500 children and young people, and may have raped more than 30.

Of the allegations made so far, police have gathered sufficient evidence to record 200 sexually related crimes by Savile across the country, committed using the power of his personality and fame to dupe a huge number of institutions – including, it is understood, at least one hospice – into giving him access to vulnerable people.

The number of institutions identified in the inquiry raises the spectre of a systemic failure that spread into every corner of British society.

Detectives and child protection experts working on the inquiry into Savile hope the report will mark a line in the sand – a cultural shift in attitudes between today and 30 years ago, when a blind eye was turned to such activity with children and young people and victims were not listened to.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/10/jimmy-savile-abuse-inquiry-published

German Bishops Cancel Study Into Sexual Abuse by Priests
By REUTERS January 9, 2013
PARIS (Reuters) — Germany’s Roman Catholic bishops on Wednesday canceled a study into the sexual abuse of minors by priests, prompting the investigator to accuse them of trying to censor what was to be a major report on the scandals.
The independent study, examining church files that sometimes date to 1945, was meant to shed light on undiscovered cases after about 600 people filed claims against priests in 2010 following a wave of revelations of sexual abuse. The German scandals were part of a series of abuse scandals that also shook the Catholic Church in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United States, forcing Pope Benedict XVI to issue a public apology.

Bishop Stephan Ackermann, a spokesman on abuse issues for the German Bishops’ Conference, said that the hierarchy had lost confidence in the researcher, Christian Pfeiffer, a criminologist, and that it would look for another specialist for the study.

“We will have to find a new partner,” Bishop Ackermann said in a statement that blamed Mr. Pfeiffer’s “communications behavior with church officials” for the breakdown.

Mr. Pfeiffer told German Radio that the bishops wanted to change previously agreed-upon guidelines for the project to include a final veto over publishing its results, which he could not accept.

Officials made “an attempt to turn the whole contract towards censorship and stronger control by the church,” said Mr. Pfeiffer, head of the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/world/europe/german-bishops-cancel-study-into-sexual-abuse-by-priests.html

Rape Has a Purpose 1/05/2013 Soraya Chemaly

….No matter where you are in the world, the result of rape — “date rape,” “gang-rape,” “easy rape,” “emergency rape,” “war rape” — is the same: oppression. Women are not free to live without the constant threat of assault and violence or without being treated like objects and property.  When I last checked there were at least four “rape capitals” of the world. You know what that makes the rest of us? “Rape Suburbs.” Girls and women aren’t idiots. On the contrary, we understand perfectly: we’re supposed to “be careful.” Don’t do something we might “regret.”  “Stay home.” “So what if it happens, anyway?” We can’t feel any security that our bodily integrity will be respected. Or that our consent matters. We cannot enjoy the confident access and ownership of public space that men do. Our attempts to pursue equality and opportunity are inhibited, not only by actual rape, but by people’s malevolent tolerance for it. Rape is useful, even the rape of boys and men: it sustains a system that rewards physical dominance and sustains male hegemony.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/syrian-rape-and-chemical-_b_2370638.html

$123M settlement Delaware abuse case, Institutional Abuse North Ireland, Rochdale, Gangs

- $123M settlement approved in Del. child abuse case
- Historic child abuse investigation will now cost £19m, Assembly told
- Rochdale child abuse case: exploited girls faced ‘absolute disrespect’
- 45 children a day at risk from sexual exploitation by gangs, warns inquiry
- Groomed, raped, frightened: the victims of child sexual exploitation

$123M settlement approved in Del. child abuse case
Esteban Parra, The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal Share

The former pediatrician last year was found guilty of raping or assaulting more than 100 girls he treated. His own videos helped to convict him.

November 20. 2012 -

GEORGETOWN, Del. — A Superior Court judge approved a $123 million class-action settlement related to the child sexual abuse committed by former Lewes, Del., pediatrician Earl Bradley.

Under the Monday settlement’s terms, the money would be put into a pool for victims, similar to the system used for victims in priest sex-abuse cases.

A mediator will evaluate each claim and separate them into different categories based on the severity of abuse. A settlement amount then will be assigned to each category and all approved for that category will be paid.

“The approval of this class-action settlement marks the end of litigation arising from Dr. Bradley’s 15-year reign of terror and abuse in Sussex County,” Superior Court Judge Joseph R. Slights III wrote in his 56-page decision….

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/19/delaware-child-abuse-case/1715867/

Historic child abuse investigation will now cost £19m, Assembly told

By Lesley-Anne McKeown
Wednesday, 21 November 2012

Costs for an inquiry into historical institutional child abuse in Northern Ireland could reach £19m, the Assembly has been told.

Ulster Unionist MLA Mike Nesbitt, who chairs Stormont’s OFMDFM committee, said MLAs had been informed in September that predicted costs had doubled from initial estimates.

The Strangford MLA added: “On the estimated costs of the inquiry the committee sought clarification from the department whether the figures in the financial and explanatory memorandum of between £7.5m and £9m remained accurate.

“Officials advised the committee that the estimated costs had been revised upwards — doubled in fact to £15-19m to take into account the complexities of the inquiry and the associated legal costs.”….

Initially, the inquiry was to look at cases between 1945 and 1995, but MLAs have since agreed to extend it back to 1922.

The probe comes after the Ryan Report uncovered decades of endemic abuse in some religious institutions in the Republic of Ireland.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/historic-child-abuse-investigation-will-now-cost-19m-assembly-told-16240341.html

Rochdale child abuse case: exploited girls faced ‘absolute disrespect’

MPs question why the NHS crisis team that was praised for raising the alarm about sexual abuse in Rochdale has suffered job cuts

Rachel Williams The Guardian, Tuesday 20 November 2012

It was a simple yet powerful piece of evidence. Asked what lay behind the failures in Rochdale over sexual exploitation of teenage girls, Sara Rowbotham, co-ordinator of the local NHS crisis intervention team, paused before answering. “It was about attitudes towards teenagers,” she told the home affairs select committee earlier this month. “It was absolute disrespect that vulnerable young people did not have a voice. They were overlooked. They were discriminated against. They were treated appallingly by protective services.”

Since nine men were jailed in May for “sharing” five girls, plying them with fast food, drink and drugs so they could use them for sex, a picture has emerged of missed opportunities to help young girls being exploited – based on a mistaken belief they were simply “making their own choices”. The NHS team has emerged as one of the few services that got it right. But staff numbers on the team, which offers one-to-one sexual health advice to vulnerable teenagers, have been cut from 10 to seven over the past three years.

A Guardian investigation this year found the crisis intervention team made more than 100 referrals about girls it thought were either being sexually exploited, or at risk of it, to Rochdale borough council social services and Greater Manchester police between 2004 and the end of 2010. A report published in September by the local safeguarding children board (SCB) was damning of the “poor response” of Rochdale’s children’s social care department. It also praised the crisis intervention team’s ability to understand that girls were victims of abuse, rather than consenting young adults. Its work, Rowbotham told the select committee, had helped secure the recent convictions, because the victims’ evidence was corroborated by the service’s case notes….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/20/rochdale-child-abuse-case

45 children a day at risk from sexual exploitation by gangs, warns inquiry

Local authorities, police and healthcare professionals ignoring warning signs displayed by those at risk, says interim report
Alexandra Topping
The Guardian, Tuesday 20 November 2012

As many as 45 children a day are at risk of rape, violence and sexual exploitation at the hands of gangs who prey on their vulnerability, according to the biggest study of its kind carried out in England….

The inquiry’s interim report found that 2,409 children had been sexually exploited in a 14-month period form August 2010 to October 2011, but the real figure was likely to be “far greater” because of lack of data and confusion in reporting sexual exploitation. As many as 16,500 children were identified as being at “high risk” of sexual exploitation – displaying three or more warning signs including running away from home, drug or alcohol misuse and criminality.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/21/child-risk-sex-exploitation-gang

describes crimes

Groomed, raped, frightened: the victims of child sexual exploitation

Children living in residential care are particularly at risk of sexual exploitation, according to report

Alexandra Topping The Guardian, Tuesday 20 November 2012

Teegan, a white British girl, told report authors she had been sexually exploited from the age of 12. After being groomed she was taken to “parties” across England in nice houses, sometimes mansions, where men could choose which girls they wanted to have sex with from a book with photographs and ages of all of the girls available. Teegan thought she cost around £500 a hour, and said in some cases one girl could be hired for a group of men over an evening. If Teegan refused, she would be beaten and her family threatened. After the abuse, she took several overdoses, was placed in secure accommodation, and self-harmed – sometimes on a daily basis. She said she was too scared to make a formal complaint.

Marina, 16, and her 14-year-old sister were sexually exploited after being groomed by white British shop owners in return for alcohol and cigarettes. Marina also had a “boyfriend” in his late 30s, of North African origin, who would pass her around his friends for sex. She told the report that she was driven to “parties” where she would be raped by multiple men before being dropped off at home.

In another case, when Sahida, a 17-year-old British Pakistani girl, said a family member had sexually abused her she was threatened with a forced marriage. After the threats she began spending time with older Asian males, and was moved to multiple locations by them. She is now pregnant and has been physically assaulted by her family as a punishment.

Children living in residential care are particularly at risk of sexual exploitation, according to the report. A specialist sexual exploitation service told the report that a particular home was repeatedly targeted by groomers, and that new girls coming into the home were likely to be sexually exploited….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/21/groomed-raped-victims-sexual-exploitation

Child Abuse Linked to Accusations of ‘Possession’ and ‘Witchcraft,’ Ritual abuse and race

Ritual abuse and race

guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 January 2012

We were pleased to see your report (An abuse of faith, Social care, 18 January) outlining the evidence of the numbers of black children subjected to violence linked to witchcraft. This is extremely concerning and many of us have worked with such children and adults from the black communities who have experienced abusive aspects of juju, Santeria, witchcraft and possession in the UK. While our major religious institutions are now putting safeguarding procedures into place, children (and adults) from smaller religious groups do not have that safety. We are also concerned as individuals and as a committee that the ritual abuse of white children (and adults) is less easily acknowledged (the Kidwelly case in 2011).

It can be far easier, sometimes for racist reasons, to accept the ritual abuse of black children (witness the Adam Case known as “Torso in The Thames” in 2001), and especially from working-class backgrounds. The white middle-class children (and adults) and those who work with them and support them are subject to implications that such experiences, if the victim is not black, must be bizarre delusions. This makes it harder for disclosures to be made and for the police to help, and delays the understanding of the impact of ritual on all children and adults when used abusively.

Dr V Sinason, Rachel Wingfield, Prof Joseph Schwartz, Dr Sandra Buck, Dr Joan Coleman, Carole Mallard, Wilfred Wong, Deborah Briggs, Dr Pat Frankish, David Leevers, Orit Badouk-Epstein, Lynn Greenwood

Committee on Ritual Abuse, London

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/23/ritual-abuse-and-race

Why is child abuse tied to witchcraft on the rise?

Evidence is emerging that a growing number of children are being subjected to exorcism rituals. Louise Hunt finds out why
Louise Hunt     The Guardian, Tuesday 17 January 2012

Social workers are used to coping with the unexpected – it comes with the territory. But child-protection specialists are increasingly coming across a kind of case that few textbooks have prepared them for: abuse of children related to belief in witchcraft.

Child abuse linked to ideas of spirit possession and witchcraft branding is a growing phenomenon, according to evidence given to the Commons education select committee’s current inquiry into child protection. It is predominantly an issue in African communities, often fuelled by extreme religious conviction, and experts believe that its growth is a reaction to personal or family misfortune brought about by the economic downturn.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/18/child-abuse-witchcraft-exorcism-rise

Child Abuse Linked to Accusations of ‘Possession’ and ‘Witchcraft’
Reference:RR750
Published:June 2006
The belief in “possession” and “witchcraft” is widespread. The UK is not alone in seeing cases of this nature; cases have been reported worldwide. The children discussed in this report came from a variety of backgrounds including African, South Asian and European.

This report is based on desk research and discussions with social workers, school teachers, police officers, voluntary workers and others who had knowledge of aspects of the subject. An important feature has been collecting and examining reports of cases that occurred since January 2000, analysing the often limited information recorded and drawing conclusions from this material.

https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/RSG/publicationDetail/Page1/RR750

Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults

Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study -

American Journal of Preventive Medicine
Volume 14, Issue 4 , Pages 245-258, May 1998

Vincent J Felitti MD, FACP, Robert F Anda MD, MS, Dale Nordenberg MD,    David F Williamson MS, PhD, Alison M Spitz MS, MPH, Valerie Edwards BA,     Mary P Koss PhD, James S Marks MD, MPH

Abstract

Background: The relationship of health risk behavior and disease in adulthood to the breadth of exposure to childhood emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, and household dysfunction during childhood has not previously been described.

Methods: A questionnaire about adverse childhood experiences was mailed to 13,494 adults who had completed a standardized medical evaluation at a large HMO; 9,508 (70.5%) responded. Seven categories of adverse childhood experiences were studied: psychological, physical, or sexual abuse; violence against mother; or living with household members who were substance abusers, mentally ill or suicidal, or ever imprisoned. The number of categories of these adverse childhood experiences was then compared to measures of adult risk behavior, health status, and disease. Logistic regression was used to adjust for effects of demographic factors on the association between the cumulative number of categories of childhood exposures (range: 0–7) and risk factors for the leading causes of death in adult life.

Results: More than half of respondents reported at least one, and one-fourth reported =2 categories of childhood exposures. We found a graded relationship between the number of categories of childhood exposure and each of the adult health risk behaviors and diseases that were studied (P < .001). Persons who had experienced four or more categories of childhood exposure, compared to those who had experienced none, had 4- to 12-fold increased health risks for alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and suicide attempt; a 2- to 4-fold increase in smoking, poor self-rated health, =50 sexual intercourse partners, and sexually transmitted disease; and a 1.4- to 1.6-fold increase in physical inactivity and severe obesity. The number of categories of adverse childhood exposures showed a graded relationship to the presence of adult diseases including ischemic heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, skeletal fractures, and liver disease. The seven categories of adverse childhood experiences were strongly interrelated and persons with multiple categories of childhood exposure were likely to have multiple health risk factors later in life.

Conclusions: We found a strong graded relationship between the breadth of exposure to abuse or household dysfunction during childhood and multiple risk factors for several of the leading causes of death in adults.

….However, our estimates of the prevalence of childhood exposures are similar to estimates from nationally representative surveys, indicating that the experiences of our study participants are comparable to the larger population of U.S. adults. In our study, 23.5% of participants reported having grown up with an alcohol abuser; the 1988 National Health Interview Survey estimated that 18.1% of adults had lived with an alcohol abuser during childhood. Contact sexual abuse was reported by 22% of respondents (28% of women and 16% of men) in our study. A national telephone survey of adults in 1990 using similar criteria for sexual abuse estimated that 27% of women and 16% of men had been sexually abused.

http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797%2898%2900017-8/fulltext

72 charged in online child pornography ring, Violence Against Women and effects

“the bulletin board distributed the equivalent of 16,000 DVDs of child pornography, adding that the department had recovered more than 1 million images in the U.S. alone.”

“In the United States, more than 20 percent of women have experienced intimate-partner violence, stalking or both. A full 17 percent have reported rape or attempted rape, according to background information in the study.”

72 charged in online child pornography ring

Fifty-two have been arrested in the U.S. and abroad and 13 have pleaded guilty in the case, the result of a crackdown by the Justice and Homeland Security departments. Twenty remain at large.
By Andrew Seidman, Washington Bureau
August 3, 2011

Reporting from Washington—
The Justice Department has charged 72 suspected members of an online child pornography ring that encouraged its members to engage in sexual acts with children 12 and under and submit gruesome, violent material to build a massive private database of images and videos on the Internet.

The crackdown is the result of a joint effort by the departments of Justice and Homeland Security launched in December 2009 to target about 500 people in 13 countries on five continents for their suspected participation in “Dreamboard,” a members-only online bulletin board that was created to encourage the sharing of graphic images and videos.

“The members of this criminal network shared a demented dream to create the preeminent online community for the promotion of child sexual exploitation,” Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement, “but for the children they victimized, this was nothing short of a nightmare.”

According to court documents filed in Louisiana, where the ring originated, administrators for Dreamboard set up strict barriers to entry and created a sophisticated membership system that offered incentives for further contributions to the website. Individuals had to post child pornography in order to join the site. To maintain membership, individuals were required to continue to upload images of sexual abuse….

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that the bulletin board distributed the equivalent of 16,000 DVDs of child pornography, adding that the department had recovered more than 1 million images in the U.S. alone.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-child-porn-20110804,0,5337258.story

Violence Against Women Can Take Lifelong Toll: Study
Research shows how rates of mental and physical illness rise, quality of life falls

By Serena Gordon HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Aug. 2 (HealthDay News)

Women who’ve suffered from gender-based violence are more likely to develop anxiety disorders or other mental woes, experience physical and mental disabilities, and have worse quality of life than other women, new research shows.

Gender-based violence includes rape and other forms of sexual assault, intimate-partner violence (such as spouse abuse) and stalking.

Risks for these long-term problems rose with the intensity of abuse. For example, women who’d experienced three or four types of gender-based violence had 10 times the odds of developing an anxiety disorder than women who haven’t experienced such violence, the study found. The odds of a woman who’d been subjected to such violence developing a substance abuse problem were almost six times higher than for a woman who hasn’t experienced gender-based violence….

Results of the study are published in the Aug. 3 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association….

In the United States, more than 20 percent of women have experienced intimate-partner violence, stalking or both. A full 17 percent have reported rape or attempted rape, according to background information in the study.

The data for Rees’ study came from a national survey done in Australia on mental health and well-being. The survey included over 4,400 women between the ages of 16 and 85 years old.

In that group, 1,218 women (27 percent) reported experiencing at least one form of gender-based violence, while 139 had been exposed to three or more forms of gender-based violence.

The average age that women were first raped was 13 years old and 12 years old for sexual assault. The average age that women were beaten by a partner or stalked was 22 years old.

The more violence a woman was exposed to, the greater her risk of developing mental illnesses, according to the study.

http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=655484

 

Casey Anthony case sealed evidence, Child p_rn victims get younger, violence

“Seemingly normal people….are charged with possessing and making child porn, a $3-billion-a-year industry that the federal government has labeled the new silent child abuse…..Currently, there are an estimated 100,000 known child porn websites”

WHEN WILL WE SEE THE “SEALED” EVIDENCE?
2011 July 16 by Wendy Murphy

First, I’m excited to let you all know that I have a book coming out very soon.  Technology allows for the publication of books far faster than ever before, but it still takes a bit of time to get things organized.  Stay tuned here for more information on the likely release date.  My hope is that it will be out before the end of August….

Assuming the backstory includes “sealed” evidence of postitution and/or child pornography, which I believe is the case, there are two key reasons this information would have been excluded from trial.  One is that the court “sealed” the information because it was never directly connected to Caylee’s murder.  If highly prejudicial information is not strongly related to proof of the crime, which is to say, the witnesses have not explained why the evidence helps to prove or disprove guilt, the court would be compelled to exclude the information as unduly prejudicial without sufficient probative force.

The second reason is that the feds are involved in investigating the porn issues and they want to be able to proceed on these charges against Casey, and perhaps others, in federal court.  If the evidence had been allowed in during the murder trial, Casey’s acquittal would have precluded retrial on the porn charges under double jeopardy principles….

Under the Supreme Court’s “same facts” Blockburger test, if the state offered any evidence of Casey Anthony’s involvement with prostitution or child pornography, those facts could not be used against her again, in a pornography prosecution, by state or federal officials….

But now that that she’s been acquitted, the truth should be told about what was sealed during trial, and what’s going on with the feds….

http://blogs.wickedlocal.com/front-page/#axzz1QbbpsUzU

Feds: Child pornography victims get younger, violence increases
Jan. 31, 2011
DETROIT — Child pornography isn’t just more pervasive, it’s getting even uglier.

Federal prosecutors here say they have witnessed the disturbing trend with the kids getting younger — toddlers and infants as young as 6 months old — turning up in photos and videos.

And the assaults are getting worse. It’s not just still images of children in the nude, they say.

“There’s a misconception in the public arena that these are mainly still images of children without clothes on. Well, the truth is that the majority of the pictures that are traded among these guys almost inevitably involve a child being either raped, or being forced to perform some type of sexual act on an adult or child,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Mulcahy, chief of the general crimes unit in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit.

Child porn lovers live in your neighborhood

They aren’t just creepy loners.

Seemingly normal people — doctors, coaches, authors, engineers, teens — are charged with possessing and making child porn, a $3-billion-a-year industry that the federal government has labeled the new silent child abuse….

Currently, there are an estimated 100,000 known child porn websites, according to Brigham Young University Women’s Services. Child porn accounts for one-quarter of the $12-billion U.S. porn industry….

The Justice Department report says complaints of online enticement of children have more than tripled from 2004 to 2008, and complaints of child prostitution rose tenfold. Since 2006, more than 8,600 people have been prosecuted at the federal level on child porn charges….

http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/CN/20110131/NJNEWS18/110131042/Feds-Child-pornography-victims-get-younger-violence-increases

 

Children speaking up about crime, abuse: study

Children speaking up about crime, abuse: study (2011-01-03)
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Children are increasingly stepping forward and telling school officials, doctors and the police when they have been the victims of crime or abuse, U.S. researchers said on Monday. A telephone survey of more than 4,500 U.S. children and teens done in 2008 found that nearly half who experienced violence, abuse or crime told someone at school, the police or a doctor or nurse. That compares with 25 percent of cases in a similar study done in 1992, David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire and colleagues reported in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine….

More than 58 percent of the children and teens said they had been personally victimized at least once in the past year. This included bullying but did not include witnessing crime, such as domestic assault.
Nearly 46 percent said they had informed authorities of the victimization. This was especially true of more serious problems. For example, authorities had been told about 69 percent of the cases of sexual abuse by a known adult.

But children also spoke up about other problems, with 51.5 percent telling someone about emotional bullying, 48 percent telling someone about neglect and 47 percent telling authorities about a theft….

“That 58.3 percent of the children and adolescents in the study sample reported at least one direct victimization incident within the past year speaks to the enormity of the problem of victimization experienced by children and adolescents in our society,” Drs. Andrea Gottsegen Asnes and John Leventhal of Yale University School of Medicine in Connecticut wrote in a commentary in the same journal.

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wbfo/news.newsmain/article/0/0/1744253/US/Children.speaking.up.about.crime..abuse.study

Children’s Exposure to Violence: A Comprehensive National Survey

David Finkelhor, Heather Turner, Richard Ormrod, Sherry Hamby, and Kristen Kracke….

The survey confirms that most of our society’s children are exposed to violence in their daily lives. More than 60 percent of the children surveyed were exposed to violence within the past year, either directly or indirectly (i.e., as a witness to a violent act; by learning of a violent act against a family member, neighbor, or close friend; or from a threat against their home or school) (for full details on these and other statistics cited in this Bulletin, see Finkelhor et al., 2009). Nearly one-half of the children and adolescents surveyed (46.3 percent) were assaulted at least once in the past year, and more than 1 in 10 (10.2 percent) were injured in an assault; 1 in 4 (24.6 percent) were victims of robbery, vandalism, or theft; 1 in 10 (10.2 percent) suffered from child maltreatment (including physical and emotional abuse, neglect, or a family abduction); and 1 in 16 (6.1 percent) were victimized sexually.

More than 1 in 4 (25.3 percent) witnessed a violent act and nearly 1 in 10 (9.8 percent) saw one family member assault another. Multiple victimizations were common: more than one-third (38.7 percent) experienced 2 or more direct victimizations in the previous year, more than 1 in 10 (10.9 percent) experienced 5 or more direct victimizations in the previous year, and more than 1 in 75 (1.4 percent) experienced 10 or more direct victimizations in the previous year.

Reports of lifetime exposure to violence were generally about one-third to one-half higher than reports of past-year exposure, although the difference tended to be greater for less frequent and more severe types of victimization. (For example, more than three times as many respondents reported being victims of a kidnapping over their lifetimes as did in the past year.) Nearly seven in eight children (86.6 percent) who reported being exposed to violence during their lifetimes also reported being exposed to violence within the past year, which indicated that these children were at ongoing risk of violent victimization. The reports of lifetime exposure also indicate how certain types of exposure change and accumulate as a child grows up; nearly one in five girls ages 14 to 17 (18.7 percent) had been the victim of a sexual assault or attempted sexual assault, and more than one-third of all 14- to 17-year-olds had seen a parent assaulted. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/227744.pdf

Violence and Childhood: How Persisting Fear Can Alter the Developing Child’s Brain

Violence and Childhood: How Persisting Fear Can Alter the Developing Child’s Brain – A Special ChildTrauma Academy WebSite version of:

The Neurodevelopmental Impact of Violence in Childhood
Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.

The ChildTrauma Academy  http://www.ChildTrauma.org Web Version DRAFT
Perry, B.D. (2001b). The neurodevelopmental impact of violence in childhood. In Schetky D & Benedek, E. (Eds.) Textbook of child and adolescent forensic psychiatry. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, Inc. (221-238)\

Violence in Childhood: Scope of the Problem  – Violence in the Home

Childhood is a dangerous time. For infants and children, survival is dependent upon adults, most typically, the nuclear family. It is in the family setting that the child is fed, clothed, sheltered, nurtured and educated. Unfortunately, it is in the familial incubator that children are most frequently manipulated, coerced, degraded, inoculated with destructive beliefs and exposed to violence.

The home is the most violent place in America (Straus, 1974). In 1995, the FBI reported that 27% of all violent crime involves family on family violence, 48% involved acquaintances with the violence often occurring in the home (National Incident-Based Reporting System, Uniform Crime Reporting Program, 1999). Children are often the witnesses to, or victims of, these violent crimes.
Violent crime statistics, however, grossly underestimate the prevalence of violence in the home. It is likely that less than 5% of all domestic violence results in a criminal report. Intra-familial abuse and domestic battery account for the majority of physical and emotional violence suffered by children in this country (see Koop et al., 1992; Horowitz et al., 1995; Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1995). This violence takes many forms. The child may witness the assault of her mother by father or boyfriend. The child may be the direct victim of violence – physical or emotional – from father, mother or even older siblings. Straus and Gelles (1996) have estimated that over 29 million children commit an act of violence against a sibling each year. The child may become the direct victim of the adult male if he or she tries to intervene and protect mother or sibling. While these all cause physical violence, an additional destructive element of this intra-familial toxicity is emotional violence – humiliation, coercion, degradation, and threat of abandonment or physical assault. http://www.childtrauma.org/ctamaterials/Vio_child.asp