UK child abuse deaths may be double official records
A study by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has suggested that child deaths from abuse in the UK may be double the number recored by current official records.
Two children under the age of 15 die from abuse in the UK each week according to the report, making Britain 14th from the top in a ‘league table’ of child deaths in 27 of the richest states.
Nearly 3,500 children under 15 die from abuse (including neglect) every year in the industrialised world, with Belgium, the Czech Republic, New Zealand, Hungary and France coming at the top of the list.
Previous studies have suggested that the UK has one of the lowest rates of child deaths through maltreatment, but UNICEF is concerned that many statistics under-represent the true situation.
In an attempt to show the true picture UNICEF has produced the ‘league table’ which combines national totals of child deaths from known abuse and neglect with those child deaths that are recorded as being of ‘undetermined cause’.
In the UK this more than doubles the death rate, increasing it from 0.4 deaths per 100,000 children to 0.9 deaths per 100,000 children.
UNICEF argued that ‘few practitioners in the field of child protection would quarrel with the idea that a large proportion of deaths from undetermined causes are in fact deaths from unprovable maltreatment’.
The report also makes an explicit connection between child abuse and broader violence against children. It suggests that any serious attempt to tackle child abuse must include a ban on smacking children.
