I’m glad to know that someone is advocating for raped and trafficked children.
If not for the research, reporting and press about priests molesting children, there would not be much attention or understanding of the trauma suffered by sexually abused children or their numbers.
It’s not clear how many children have been abused by priests in the U.S. these past 20 years, but a reasonable guess might be 50,000 to 100,000.
Using the higher total of 100,000 children abused over 20 years by priests means that about 5000 children a year have been molested annually.
Statistically, this number is a tiny fraction of the sexual violence & trafficking done to American children in their own homes by family members and caregivers each year (about) 1,400,000 of the 7.4 million children reported abused in America each year…have suffered sexual violence. Of the 50 children I helped remove from toxic homes as a volunteer CASA guardian ad Litem, about half of them had suffered sexual violence. One as young as two, several that were four and the rest under ten when their abuse started and except for one child, the abuse lasted for years.
Sex abuse of children within the child protection system is often minimized or not made part of the case as children make poor witnesses and sex abuse is hard to prove.
Mandated reporters have repeatedly explained to me why they don’t report child sex abuse when they should. It drags them into the sad and messy piece of courts and law that leave all parties unhappy with the results.
Overall, most abused and trafficked children are never reported, and the numbers used above are just a fraction of the traumatized children entering our workforce and schools every year.
This short ACEs medical perspective on the impact of childhood trauma explains a great deal about why our schools are troubled, streets unsafe and courts & jails bursting with dysfunctional people.
This sample of September news articles captures a small fraction of raped children reported to newspapers last month.
All Adults Are the Protectors of All Children