Issues to consider when looking at child abuse statistics

We don't know exactly how many children experience abuse. Child abuse often goes unreported and unrecorded.

Data is available on abuse that has been recorded by services that work with children, and various research studies provide data on children’s and adults’ self-reported experiences of abuse.

Although these statistics can help us to build up a picture of the scale of abuse, all data sources have their limitations. 

This factsheet covers issues to consider when:

• using service data
• using self-report data
• looking at trends in data
• comparing statistics across different areas - at local level, across the UK and around the world.

Published: January 2024