Suchergebnisse

AbstractChild sexual abuse is a universal public health problem. Although studies have reported that 11% to 37% of children have been sexually abused in Turkey, no accurate information is available. Thus, this study aims to investigate child sexual abuse cases registered in legal databases in select provinces in Turkey to improve our epidemiological understanding of regionally reported cases. The sample of this study consists of child sexual abuse cases filed with courthouses in four provinces in Turkey under Articles 103 and 104 of the Turkish Criminal Law, between October 2010 and October 2011. Retrospective review of these case files revealed 1,005 cases, 86% female, and 45.7% both sexually abused and exposed to other forms of abuse. Sexual abuse was often accompanied by physical abuse. Regarding the relationship of the perpetrator to the victim, 14.3% of perpetrators were found to be family members. There was also a significant relationship between child's gender and perpetrator's relationship to the victim; boys were abused mostly by strangers (55.7%) and girls by their peers (54.9%).

We conducted a secondary analysis of the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) to examine child abuse and neglect hospitalization from 1998–2016. The NIS is the largest all-payer, inpatient care database in the United States and is maintained by the Health Care Utilization Project. Participants were youth 18 years and younger with discharged diagnoses of child abuse and neglect from hospitals. The rate of child abuse or neglect hospitalizations did not vary significantly over the study period (1998–2016), which on average was 6.9 per 100,000 children annually. Males (53.0%), infants (age < 1; 47.3%), and young children (age 1–3; 24.2%) comprised most of the child maltreatment cases. Physical abuse was the most frequent type of maltreatment leading to hospitalization. Government insurance was the most common payer source, accounting for 77.3% of all child maltreatment hospitalizations and costing 1.4 billion dollars from 2001–2016. Hospitalizations due to child abuse and neglect remain steady and are costly, averaging over $116 million per year. The burden on government sources suggests a high potential for return on investment in effective child abuse prevention strategies.