Experiences of childhood abuse: Key numbers and findings

Figures have been published for the first time estimating the proportion of adults in England and Wales who are likely to have experienced any type of abuse during childhood, including neglect.

Here the PA news agency looks at the key numbers and findings in the report, which has been produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

– How abuse is defined and measured

The ONS based its findings on responses collected as part of the Crime Survey of England and Wales for the year ending March 2024.

The questions in the survey capture people’s recollections today of what they experienced during childhood – for example, someone in their 80s recalling childhood in the 1940s, or someone in their 20s recalling more recent experiences.

The new figures are therefore a reflection of past experiences, not a measure of current levels of child abuse.

The figures cover four types of childhood abuse: emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse or neglect.

They are based on responses of people aged 18 and over in England and Wales.

– Overall experience of abuse

Around three in 10 adults in England and Wales (29.0%) are estimated to have experienced some form of abuse as a child – the equivalent of 13.6 million people.

Prevalence is higher for woman, at 31.5% (7.5 million), than for men, at 26.4% (6.1 million).

– Most common type of abuse

Emotional abuse is the most common type of childhood abuse and has been experienced by an estimated 22.7% of adults in England and Wales, the equivalent of 10.6 million people.

It is followed by physical abuse (16.5% or 7.7 million people), sexual abuse (9.1% or 4.3 million) and neglect (7.6% or 3.6 million).

The largest difference between women and men is for sexual abuse, with around one in seven women having experienced this type of abuse before the age of 18 (3.3 million people or 13.9%), compared with around one in 25 men (949,000 or 4.1%).

The gap is smaller for emotional abuse (24.5% of women, 20.9% of men) and neglect (9.2% of women, 6.1% of men), while for physical abuse the figure is slightly higher for men (17.1%) than women (16.0%).

Some 4.0% of women are estimated to have experienced rape or assault by penetration, including attempts, during their childhood, along with 0.9% of men.

– How experience of abuse varies by characteristics

Experience of childhood abuse varies across different personal and household characteristics, the figures suggest.

A higher proportion of gay and lesbian people in England and Wales are estimated to have experienced any abuse before the age of 18 (48.1%) than heterosexual people (27.7%), with an even higher figure for bisexual people (62.5%).

More than half (53.4%) of people with a gender identity different from the sex they were registered at birth are likely to have experienced abuse as a child, nearly twice the proportion for people with a gender identity the same as their sex registered at birth (28.9%).

The figure was higher for people who were disabled at the time of being interviewed for the survey (42.0%) than those who were not disabled (26.4%).

It was also higher for those from a mixed ethnic background (40.2%) than those of a white (31.0%), black (18.2%) or Asian ethnicity (14.7%).

People living in lone-parent households at the time of the survey had a higher prevalence of experiencing any abuse before the age of 18 (35.0%) than those who lived in other households with children (29.2%) or with no children (28.7%).

– Perpetrator of abuse

Among adults who experienced physical abuse before the age of 18, the most frequently named perpetrators were fathers (45.6%), mothers (37.2%), people in a position of trust or authority (10.8%) and strangers (10.8%).

For those who experienced emotional abuse, the most common relationships of the victim to perpetrator were father (29.4%), mother (25.6%) and a friend aged 18 or over (16.1%).

For victims of sexual abuse, men had a higher prevalence of experiencing this abuse from a person in position of trust or authority (17.1%) than women (5.9%), while the figures were higher for women who named the perpetrator as “another relative” (9.8% compared with 4.6% for men) and who said it was a current romantic partner at the time of abuse, including a date (6.2% compared with 1.7%).

For rape or assault by penetration where the perpetrator was aged 18 or over, the perpetrators most frequently cited by respondents were spread across multiple categories at similar levels, including someone else (14.3%), a friend of the family (12.3%), a stranger (12.2%), “another relative” (12.1%) and a current romantic partner at the time of abuse, including a date (10.4%).

– Child sexual abuse

Among further details of those who experienced sexual abuse in childhood, the figures suggest 33.8% of this type of abuse occurred at someone else’s home and 30.5% at the victim’s own home, while 30.8% was in a street, park, green space or other public space.

Perpetrators were most commonly male only (91.3%), with a smaller proportion of victims saying the perpetrators were female only (4.8%), while 3.9% experienced abuse from both males and females.

Sexual abuse most commonly began when victims were aged between 13 and 15 years (33.4%), followed by those aged between 10 and 12 (22.9%).