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Parents cause most child abuse: survey

More than 80 percent of child abusers are the children's parents or foster parents, the Children's Bureau said yesterday on the eve of Universal Children's Day.

The bureau released a report on child abuse focusing on children under the age of 12.

According to the report, 7.4 children out of every 10,000 suffer abuse. The bureau had been alerted to 2,666 cases of child abuse between January and June this year.

It said that 80.2 percent of abusers were the children's parents or foster parents, followed by carers (6.5 percent) and live-in partners of single parents (4.3 percent).

The types of abuse suffered were physical harm (47.2 percent), neglect (35.1 percent), psychological harm (12.2 percent), and sexual abuse (5.5 percent). Of the sexual abuse cases, 107 victims were female, compared with 16 male victims.

The bureau said that the incidence of child abuse was clearly growing. Compared with the same period last year, there was an increase in abuse cases of 20.4 percent.

Urging the community to take the welfare and human rights of children more seriously, the bureau and activist groups also said they would participate in the World Day for the Prevention of Child Abuse together for the first time.

The World Day for the Prevention of Child Abuse is a program initiated by the Women's World Summit Foundation in 2000 to mirror the UN's Universal Children's Day.

"Education of parents, alert mechanisms and rapid intervention by social workers are the three keys to preventing child abuse, but due to lack of funding and personnel, these processes remain uncoordinated," said Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容), director of the Garden of Hope Foundation.

The bureau urged the public to more actively report suspected abuse, and to make use of the special telephone number 113 for help with domestic violence and other welfare issues.

In related news, almost 38 percent of children aged under 12 living in urban areas consider TV programs to be disgusting or horrible, according to a second survey released yesterday.

The survey, conducted by the Child Welfare League Foundation in September, showed that 37.9 percent of children found certain TV programs to be disagreeable.

"Watching TV has become the national pastime and over 50 percent of children are still watching TV after 9:30pm, when programs that have advisory classifications start," said Feng Yen (馮燕), a sociologist from National Taiwan University and the foundation's vice chairwoman.

"Children are watching TV for a long time until very late, and we can see from the survey that nearly 40 percent of children find the programs they watch disgusting or horrible," Feng said.

"This is a worrying situation," Feng added.

Feng also said there were too few children's programs on TV and even fewer were of high quality.

The foundation urged the government and the media to reconsider time slots for programs carrying advisory classifications, and urged TV stations to be more responsible with their programming and keep children's interests in mind.
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