Children and Youth as Victims of Violent Crime

Children and Youth as Victims of Violent Crime¹,²

• According to a subset of 119 police services representing 53% of the national volume of crime in 2004, overall, children and youth under 18 years of age are more at risk of physical and sexual assault than adults. For every 100,000 children and youth who resided in the areas policed by the police services reporting to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR2) survey in 2004, 775 were either physically or sexually assaulted. This compares to a rate of 631 among adults.
• Rates for children and youth were higher than adults for both physical and sexual assault, however the disparity in rates was much greater for sexual assaults (200 per 100,000 children and youth versus 34 per 100,000 adults).
• In 2004, among children under 18 years of age, girls were at greatest risk of sexual assault whereas the rate for physical assault was higher for boys. Girls were over four times more likely to be sexually assaulted than boys (327 versus 79 per 100,000 population). The rate of physical assault among boys was 50% higher than the rate for girls (696 versus 447 per 100,000).
• According to the subset of 119 police services, children’s risk of physical and sexual assault increases with age. In 2004, for every 100,000 toddlers under the age of three, police reported 126 victims of physical and sexual assault. Rates grew to 419 per 100,000 children aged 3 to 11 years, and then to 1,504 per 100,000 youth aged 12 to 17 years. This trend is not surprising given that children are increasingly exposed to others and acquire more independence as they grow up, increasing their risk of victimization.
• Overall, police-reported data suggest that children are most likely to be physically or sexually assaulted by someone they know and least likely to be victimized by a stranger. For every 100,000 children and youth in 2004, 376 had been assaulted by someone known to them other than a family member, 196 by a family member and 120 by a stranger.
• Data from the UCR2 survey also show that girls are at greater risk of family violence than boys. In 2004, for every 100,000 girls residing in the areas policed by the 119 police services reporting to the UCR2 survey, 242 were physically or sexually assaulted by a family member, compared to a rate of 152 for boys. This difference was driven by the fact that girls were sexually assaulted by a family member at a rate that was almost four times the rate among boys (110 versus 29 per 100,000).
• Another form of victimization experienced by children and youth is witnessing violence. According to the 2004 General Social Survey (GSS), 394,000 spousal violence victims reported that children saw or heard this violence. This represented 33% of all victims of spousal violence. 
• Overall, female victims of spousal violence in the five years prior to the 2004 survey were more likely to report that children saw or heard the violence (40%) than male victims of spousal violence (25%).
• Among all spousal violence relationships where the victim reported that children saw or heard violence during the five-year period prior to the survey, 40% reported that they feared for their life and 44% reported that they were physically injured.

Sources:

Beattie, K. 2005. “Children witnessing family violence in the home” in Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile 2005. K. AuCoin (ed.) Catalogue no. 85-224-XIE.  Ottawa: Statistics Canada.

Kong, R. 2006. “An overview of police-reported violence against children and youth” in Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile 2006. L. Ogrodnik (ed.) Catalogue no. 85-224-XIE.  Ottawa: Statistics Canada.

• 1 Information on violence against children and youth in this fact sheet is based on data collected through the Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR2) survey.  These data reflect both physical and sexual assault offences that came to the attention of the police and which were substantiated by the police. In 2004, the UCR2 survey collected complete data from 120 police services across Canada.  Of these, 119 provided reliable data on the relationship of the accused to the victim and represented 53% of the national volume of crime that year. 
• 2 Information on children witnessing family violence in the home is based on data from the 2004 General Social Survey on Victimization.