PHOM Indicator Profile Report of Child sexual abuse, self-reported

Why Is This Important?

All types of child abuse represent a threat to public health. Child sexual abuse is one of eight commonly tracked adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and research into child abuse and neglect (CAN) and ACEs has consistently shown the potential for many negative long-term impacts on health, opportunity, and well-being. Tracking child abuse prevalence is a complicated task and some of the best data available are self-reported retrospective data which gives a more complete view of prevalence over child protective services or hospital data.

Female adults indicated a significantly higher prevalence of sexual abuse during their childhood than male adults (~1 in 5 vs ~1 in 12). Female youth also indicated a similar significantly higher prevalence of sexual abuse in the last 12 months than male youth (also ~1 in 5 vs ~1 in 12).

Data Notes

Adult/BRFSS and youth/YRBS sexual abuse data are each collected with different questions that include different time frames. The sexual abuse question utilized in the YRBS has only been asked one time in 2021, while the BRFSS question has been asked in 2013, 2016, 2018, and 2020.

Healthy People Objective: Reduce nonfatal child maltreatment

U.S. Target: 8.5 maltreatment victims per 1,000 children