Children and Youth as Victims of Violent Crime
- According to a subset of 122 police services representing 71% of the national volume of crime in 2005, overall, children and youth1,2 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 2005, 769 were either physically or sexually assaulted. This compares to a rate of 676 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 (206 per 100,000 children and youth versus 39 per 100,000 adults);
- In 2005, 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 almost four times more likely to be sexually assaulted than boys (320 versus 86 per 100,000 population). The rate of physical assault among boys was 1.5 times higher than the rate for girls (705 versus 428 per 100,000);
- According to the subset of 122 police services, children’s risk of physical and sexual assault increases with age. In 2005, for every 100,000 toddlers under the age of three, police reported 126 victims of physical and sexual assault. Rates grew to 430 per 100,000 children aged 3 to 11 years, and then to 1,477 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 2005, 348 had been assaulted by someone known to them other than a family member, 200 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 2005, for every 100,000 girls residing in the areas policed by the 122 police services reporting to the UCR2 survey, 238 were physically or sexually assaulted by a family member, compared to a rate of 159 for boys. This difference was driven by the fact that girls were sexually assaulted by a family member at a rate that was more than three times the rate among boys (108 versus 32 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%); and,
- 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:
- 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 2005, the UCR2 survey collected complete
and reliable data
from 122 police services across Canada and represented 71% 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.
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