This saddens me

Yale Study: 12 Percent of US Children Abused

A university research group arrived at the cumulative estimate of mistreated American children by examining the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System Child File, which includes data on every child in the country with a confirmed report of maltreatment.

Case reports accumulated between 2004 and 2011 showed over 5.6 million children had experienced maltreatment during that specific seven-year span.

"Confirmed child maltreatment is dramatically underestimated in this country. Our findings show that it is far more prevalent than the 1 in 100 that is currently reported," Christopher Wildeman, an associate professor of sociology at Yale, a faculty fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies and the study's lead author, said in a news release.

It's actually 12.5% overall for 2011 rates according to the study. When broken up by ethnicity, they found black children experienced maltreatment at a rate of 20.9%, American Indians at 14.5%, Latinos 13%, white children at 10.7% all far ahead of Asian/Pacific Islanders, which was only 3.8%. Girls are more likely to be maltreated (13% vs. boys at 12%). They also found the risk for maltreatment is higher in the first years of life. The study was published in today's (June 2nd) issue of JAMA Pediatrics [Subscription only, but you can view the abstract]. Here's the citation:

Wildeman C, Emanuel N, Leventhal JM, Putnam-Hornstein E, Waldfogel J, Lee H. The Prevalence of Confirmed Maltreatment Among US Children, 2004 to 2011. JAMA Pediatr. Published online June 02, 2014. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2014.410.