About Childhelp®
Founded in 1959 by Sara O’Meara and Yvonne Fedderson, Childhelp is a leading national non-profit organization dedicated to helping victims of child abuse and neglect. Childhelp’s approach focuses on prevention, intervention and treatment. The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline, 1-800-4-A-CHILD®, operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and receives calls from throughout the United States, Canada, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam. Childhelp’s programs and services also include residential treatment services (villages); children’s advocacy centers; therapeutic foster care; group homes; child abuse prevention, education and training; and the National Day of Hope®, part of National Child Abuse Prevention Month every April. For more information on Childhelp, please call (480) 922-8212 or visit the website at
www.childhelp.org.
Through this dedication for the treatment and prevention of child abuse, Childhelp has developed the Childhelp Alert® program to protect children from registered sex offenders.
National Child Abuse Statistics
Children are suffering from a hidden epidemic of child abuse and neglect. While 3 million reports of child abuse are made every year in the United States, experts estimate that the actual number of incidents of abuse and neglect is 3 times greater than reported.
- Four children die every day as a result of child abuse and three out of four of these victims are under the age of four.
- A report of child abuse is made every 10 seconds.
- Of the reported rapes of children under 12 years old, 90% of the victims knew the perpetrator.
- Child abuse occurs at every socio-economic level, across ethnic and cultural lines, within all religions and at all levels of education.
- 36.7% of all women in prison and 14.4% of all men in prison in the United States were abused as children.
- Children who have been sexually abused are 2.5 times more likely to abuse alcohol and 3.8 times more likely to become addicted to drugs.
- One third of abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children, continuing the horrible cycle of abuse.
Sexual Assault of Children
Convicted rape and sexual assault offenders serving time in state prisons report that two-thirds of their victims were under the age of 18.
One of every seven victims of sexual assault reported to law enforcement agencies were under age six.
Among rape victims, less than 12 years of age, 90% of the children knew the offender, according to police-recorded incident data.
Frequently, the person who sexually molests a child is also a child.
40% of the offenders who sexually assaulted children under age 6 were juvenile (under the age of 18).