Every 41 seconds a child is confirmed as maltreated. Every six hours a child is killed by abuse or neglect.

In 2009:

There were 3.6 million reports of child maltreatment in the United States involving more than six million children.

Over 690,000 children were found to be victims of child maltreatment.

Of these victims:

• 78.3 percent suffered neglect.
• 17.8 percent suffered physical abuse.
• 9.5 percent suffered sexual abuse.
• 7.6 percent suffered from psychological maltreatment.
• 2.4 percent suffered from medical neglect.

Three-quarters of child victims of maltreatment were first time victims.

1,770 children died from maltreatment. Young children are particularly vulnerable, four-fifths (80.8 percent) of all child fatalities were younger than four years old. Almost half the children who die from maltreatment every year are under a year old.

The national rate of child fatalities rose steadily from 1999 to 2009, from 1.62 per 100,000 children to 2.33 per 100,000 children.

While it is often assumed that children who die from maltreatment have been physically assaulted, in fact more than one-third (37 percent) die from neglect.

Some children who died from abuse and neglect were already known to Child Protective Services (CPS) agencies. In 34 reporting states, the children whose families had received family preservation services in the past 5 years accounted for 11.9 percent of child fatalities. In 36 reporting States, 1.9 percent of child fatalities had been in foster care and were reunited with their families in the past five years.

Four-fifths (80.9 percent) of perpetrators of child maltreatment were parents, and another 6.3 percent were other relatives of the victim. Women comprised a larger percentage of all perpetrators than men; 53.8 percent compared to 44.4 percent.

Girls have a slightly higher rate of victimization (51.1 percent compared to 48.2 percent), specifically sexual abuse, while boys have a slightly higher rate of fatalities (53.4 percent compared to 45.8 percent).

Learn More

• Learn about the role of public child welfare systems in confronting abuse and neglect — and how they often fail the children they’re supposed to protect.
• Find out how Children’s Rights confronts systems that fail abused and neglected children child welfare reform campaigns and policy advocacy.