I have been waiting a long time for a study like this. It seems comprehensive enough but, unfortunately, the premise is based on completely inadequate numbers. Nevertheless, it is a place to start.
The total lifetime economic burden of child sexual abuse in the United States was estimated at about $9.3 billion in 2015, according to findings published in Child Abuse and Neglect.
"Most people appreciate the immense mental and physical health toll of child sexual abuse on victims, but that knowledge has been insufficient to prompt serious investment in primary prevention efforts," Elizabeth J. Letourneau, PhD, professor in the department of mental health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse, said in a press release.
I am not convinced that 'most people appreciate the immense mental and physical health toll of child sexual abuse on victims'. There is actually very little written about the extent of the damage it does to kids and subsequent adult survivors. Most of it comes from survivors themselves and few of those are widely read. The damage is exponentially greater than any done to those who 'come out' under the #MeToo banner.
In their study, Letourneau and colleagues examined data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System to gather a full census of all child sexual abuse cases reported to child protective agencies across the U.S. and provide an estimate of the economic impact of child sexual abuse, according to the press release.
Unfortunately, this data system estimates the number of abused children to be in the vicinity of just under 10 per 1000. That's less than 1%. That is absurd! Darkness to Light is the most conservative resource in the country and it estimates child sex abuse rates at 10% of all children. D2L told me specifically that they do not include peer-on-peer child sex abuse in their statistics or the numbers would go way up. Those resources who do include peer-on-peer abuse report numbers like 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys. Those resources include CDC, and Journalist Resource where they report: U.S. rates were 7.5% for males and 25.3% for females.
The researchers measured health care costs, productivity losses, child welfare costs, violence/crime costs, special education costs and suicide death costs, and separately estimated quality-adjusted life-year losses. Using the best available secondary data, they also developed cost per case estimates for the 2015 annual cost and for each category. All costs were measured in U.S. dollars and adjusted to the reference year.
Letourneau and colleagues found the lifetime economic burden of child sexual abuse was roughly $9.3 billion in 2015 ($8.6 billion for female victims and $758 million for male victims), based on 20 new cases of fatal and 40,387 new substantiated cases of nonfatal abuse that occurred that year.
The lifetime cost related to fatal child sexual abuse was $1,128,334 and $1,482,933 per female and male victim, according to the researchers. The cost for female victims includes $22,730 in medical costs and $1,105,604 in productivity losses, whereas the cost for males includes $21,751 in medical costs and $1,461,182 in productivity losses. These costs increased by about $40,000 per victim when including quality-adjusted life-years.
The average lifetime cost for victims of nonfatal abuse was $282,734 per female victim; however, for male victims of nonfatal child sexual abuse, there was not enough information on productivity losses, therefore it yielded a lower average estimated lifetime cost — $74,691 per male victim. According to the results, childhood health care costs accounted for $580 million, adulthood medical costs for $399 million, productivity losses for $6.8 billion, child welfare costs for $337 million, violence/crime costs for $98 million, special education costs for $152 million and suicide death costs for $980 million of the total costs associated with nonfatal cases.
Estimates of the number of children having been sexually abused differ for reasons stated above as well as there being a variety of definitions as to what defines sexual abuse. Name calling, crude remarks are rude in my books but not sexual abuse. Pornography of any description is sexual abuse to a child.
I use somewhat conservative numbers of 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 6 to 1 in 10 boys. For both sexes then approximately 1 in 6 would be a conservative estimate. That's about 17% of all kids and is 17 times greater than Latourneau's study. That means a conservative value of $153 Billion is spent or not realized on child sex abuse and its effects.
A conservative value of $153 Billion is spent or not realized
on child sex abuse and its effects
“The U.S. now focuses broadly on proven and promising child maltreatment prevention policies and practices targeted primarily toward new and expecting parents and young children. The U.S. has not, however, focused broadly on the prevention of [child sexual abuse],” Letourneau and colleagues wrote.
“Despite the obvious appeal of preventing sexual harm from occurring in the first place, many people view [child sexual abuse] as uniquely unpreventable and, therefore, most efforts involve after-the-fact criminal justice interventions that target known offenders,” they continued. “It is hoped that a credible, comprehensive and current estimate of the national financial burden of [child sexual abuse] will bring attention to the high but unmet potential of [child sexual abuse] prevention programming and serve as a benchmark against which to evaluate cost effectiveness of subsequent prevention efforts.” – by Savannah Demko
Disclosures: Healio Psychiatry was unable to confirm any relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.
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