Unheard voices of children on child abuse and neglect

Abstract

Child abuse and neglect is a serious public health problem affecting millions of children around the world. Over the years enormous efforts have been made globally to define this phenomenon, but those efforts have been based solely on adults‘ perspectives and knowledge. Children have been excluded from the discourse. This article addresses this gap in the scientific knowledge by examining children's own views on child abuse and neglect, taking into account differences in ethnic group, gender, age and level or religiosity. The study included 1,475 Jewish and Arab children in Israel aged 9–13 years. They were asked to assign degree of severity to each of 34 items describing abusive behaviors against children.. Arab and Jewish children differed in the severity they assigned to different kinds of abusive behaviors: Arab children perceived neglect as more severe than Jewish children, whereas Jewish respondents perceived physical and emotional abuse as more severe than Arab children. While no differences were found with regard to level of religiosity, some variance was found with respect to gender and age/grade level.