How Child Abuse Effects the Native American Community
As we have sadly mentioned before, the Native American population is often victimized by violence at a higher rates than other races. Unfortunately, this statistic is also true when examining child abuse in the United States. With that being said, we must first examine what exactly is Child Abuse? The state of California describes Child Abuse and Child Neglect as:
“(1) physical injury inflicted on a child by another person, (2) sexual abuse, or (3) emotional abuse. Child neglect is defined as negligent treatment which threatens the child's health or welfare. The different types of child abuse/neglect can be categorized as follows:
Sexual abuse is the victimization of a child by sexual activities, including molestation, indecent exposure, fondling, rape, and incest. Physical abuse is bodily injury inflicted by other than accidental means on a child, including willful cruelty, unjustifiable punishment, or corporal punishment. Emotional abuse is nonphysical mistreatment, resulting in disturbed behavior by the child, such as severe withdrawal or hyperactivity. Emotional abuse includes willfully causing any child to suffer, inflicting mental suffering, or endangering a child's emotional well-being. General neglect is the negligent failure of a parent/guardian or caretaker to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, or supervision where no physical injury to the child has occurred. Severe neglect refers to those situations of neglect where the child's health is endangered, including severe malnutrition. Exploitation means forcing or coercing a child into performing activities that are beyond the child's capabilities or which are illegal or degrading, including sexual exploitation.”
In 2021, there was an estimated 470,297 cases of child neglect and 101,961 cases of physical abuse in the United States. The high number of cases equates to approximately 1 in 7 children in the United States being a victim of child abuse or neglect. That being said, for every 1,000 of these cases being reported, an average of 15.2 of these cases were for American Indian/Alaska Native children. This alarming average is higher than cases reported for any other racial group in the United States. Even more alarming, is that Native Americans only make up 2% of the population of the country.
Leading into the month of April, which is Child Abuse Awareness Month, we will discover the factors that currently have Native American children at a higher risk for victimization. Regular readers of this blog may assume many of these factors also lead to other types of victimizations such as the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Person epidemic. Moreover, over the next couple of weeks we will also explore preventative measures on how we can keep the children in our lives safe.
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