Abuse and neglect of children has been on the go for hundreds of years. There are over 3 million reports of abuse on children every year in the US alone.

It is time to take a stand in protecting our children. Talking about it does not help. It does not end the violence. Action is needed to protect our children against the abusers and peodophiles in the world. Our children’s safety is our responsibility. Our children are our future. A damaged child grows into a damaged adult.

More than 75% of adults today live challenging lives after being abused as children, with very few being able to live a stable life. Sexually abused children are 25 per cent more likely to experience teenage pregnancies and are less likely to practice safe sex. They are 3.8 times more likely to become drug addicts and 2.5 times more likely to abuse alcohol with approximately two thirds of people treated for drug abuse who have been abused as children.

Reports of child abuse are made every ten seconds with five children dying everyday as a result of abuse. More than three out of four are under the age of four.

90 per cent of child victims know their sexual abuser with 68 per cent being a family member. Child sexual abuse occurs at every social economic level across the world and at all levels of education. Around 30 per cent of abused and neglected children will go on to abuse their own child and over 60 per cent of people in drug rehabilitation centers have suffered abuse as a child.

Children who have been abused sexually are programmed to keep their abuse a secret by threats and intimidation by their abuser. Victims who in the past have tried to expose their sexual abuser have often been labeled as persistent liars, attention seekers and worse. The victims are convinced that the abuse was of their own doing because they are bad and if they breathed a word no one would believe them and their punishment would get worse. The victims are intimidated by the abusers position and are helpless and vulnerable without power or voice.

Abuse victims learn from an early age that they are alone with their secrets and it is these secrets that will eventually push the victim over the top with many ending their lives through suicide.

There are many adults who sexually abuse children in one way or another and are protected by their profession or employment. Society can draw up instructions of how to wash one hands’ in a correct manner or how not to hurt your back when moving heavy objects, but they cannot find a way to put a stop to child abuse.

Adults need to take responsibility for actions of abuse against minors and abusers must be held accountable for the damage they done and the crimes they have committed against their victims. They must be made to pay for the victims medical fees and their therapy, not just thrown in jail only to go back out into the world to re offend.

The amount of damage inflicted on a child depends on the age and size and the degree of force used. Internal lacerations and bleeding may be caused through sexual abuse, where in many cases the young victim may die due to damage to internal organs.

Between 1985 and 1994, in the US, there were 6 definite cases of deaths recorded, caused by trauma to the genitalia or rectum and sexual mutilation and 6 probable cases. The victims ranged from the ages of 2 months to 10 years old.

Child sexual abuse was made a public issue in the 1970s and 1980s. Prior to this, sexual abuse remained secretive and socially unheard of. Studies on child abuse were nonexistent until the 1920s when the first national estimate of the number of child sexual abuse cases was published in 1948. By 1968, 44 of the 50 U.S. states had put in place mandatory laws that required doctors to report cases of suspected child abuse.