Improving Research, Policy, and Practice to Understand Child Sexual Abuse

In an important, unprecedented, and largely unnoticed development, there has been a dramatic decline nationally since 1992 in the cases of child sexual abuse being reported. This decline reverses a pattern of yearly increases that dates back to the late 1970s. Estimates for 1997 put the number of substantiated cases at 84,000 nationwide, down 40% from the early 1990s.¹ As a result, sexual abuse, which formerly constituted 14% of all episodes of child maltreatment, now constitutes only 8%.