.
Working Together to Stop Abuse |
|
The Scale and Cost of Abuse in America
You know what they say, ‘Numbers don't lie.'
And the numbers on abuse are staggering and continue to escalate.
Based on CDC estimates, half the population of America have suffered from sexual, physical or emotional abuse.
For the lucky half not abused, it's a betting chance they know someone who has or have likely witnessed it themselves. |
Truly, abuse affects us all.
- A report of child abuse is made every 10 seconds – over 3 million a year
- A quarter of America's children are victims of sexual abuse
- 1 in 6 women are victims of rape or attempted rape
- 1 in 3 women are victims of intimate partner violence
- 1 in every 3 women, many men too, are victims of intimate partner violence.
You don't have to add much bullying, elder abuse, physical child abuse or neglect to understand how half the population is living with having been abused. We have a plan but it's going to take all of us helping and working together to stop abuse.
The Cost of Abuse
Money talks, so let's talk about how abuse fuels many of society's problems. It costs the US taxpayers 500 billion dollars, (that's 3,000 dollars per taxpayer) each and every year.
80% of substance abusers, 95% of prostitutes and 85% of our prison population were abused as children.
Children who experience child abuse and neglect are 59% more likely to be arrested as a juvenile, 28% more likely to be arrested as an adult, and 30% more likely to commit violent crime.
Abuse happens on such a massive scale that as a society, we more or less have come to not only accept that abuse is happening but expect it to happen. Together, we can change those expectations.
Band Aid solutions are not stopping abuse. If anything they promote its very continuance. We must become responsible for one another and begin to educate on how to speak out and ignite conversations. If we learned but one thing from the early AIDS epidemic, it's that silence equals death and the epidemic of abuse is no different. Educate so that people feel empowered to speak out and say no to abuse.
President Hoover once observed, “If the United States could have but one generation of properly born, trained, educated and healthy children, a thousand problems of government would vanish overnight…It is not the delinquent child that is at the bar of judgment, but society itself.”
|
