The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey do not collect information about crimes committed against persons under 12 years of age and thus do not provide a comprehensive picture of juvenile crime victimization. Designed to replace UCR as the national database for crimes reported to law enforcement, the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) includes detailed data about juvenile victims.

This bulletin, part of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's "Crimes against Children Series," draws on FBI and other data to provide a statistical portrait of juvenile homicide victimization, asserting that homicide is the only major cause of childhood deaths that has increased over the past 3 decades. The bulletin offers detailed information about overall patterns and victim age groups for homicides of children and youth. Specific types of juvenile homicide victimization are discussed in further detail, including maltreatment homicides, abduction homicides, and school homicides. Finally, initiatives designed to prevent homicides of children and youth are explored. (Contains 21 references.) (EV) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Crimes against Children Series Homicides of Children and Youth. Juvenile Justice Bulletin. by David Finkelhor and Richard Ormrod U.S. Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Programs

Considerable efforts have been made during the last generation to encour­ age children and their families to report victimization to authorities. Nonetheless, concern persists that most childhood victimization remains hidden. The 2008 inventory of childhood victimization the National Study of Children s Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV) (see History of the National Survey of Children s Exposure to Violence, p. 4) allowed an assess­ ment of whether authorities, including police, school, and medical authorities, are identifying victimizations.

Based on a nationally representative sample of 2,017 children age 2-9 years, this study examines variations in "safe, stable, and nurturing" relationships (SSNRs), including several forms of family perpetrated victimization, and documents associations between these factors and child trauma symptoms. Findings show that many children were exposed to multiple forms of victimization within the family (such as physical or sexual abuse, emotional maltreatment, child neglect, sibling victimization, and witnessing family violence), as evidenced by substantial intercorrelations among the different forms of victimization. Moreover, victimization exposure was significantly associated with several indices of parental dysfunction, family adversity, residential instability, and problematic parenting practices. Of all SSNR variables considered, emotional abuse and inconsistent or hostile parenting emerged as having the most powerful independent effects on child trauma symptoms. Also, findings supported a cumulative risk model, whereby trauma symptom levels increased with each additional SSNR risk factor to which children were exposed. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Polyvictimization (i.e., exposure to multiple forms of victimization) appears highly correlated with indicators of traumatic stress in children. In this study, a national sample of children and youth were assessed for 36 different kinds of victimization using the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire. Polyvictims were defined as the 10% of children experiencing the most different kinds of victimization in each of 4 developmental cohorts. The younger polyvictims had somewhat fewer victimizations overall, less sexual victimization, and more victimization at the hands of family members, particularly siblings. However, polyvictimization at every developmental level was strongly associated with distress symptoms. This study suggests the importance of assessing for and identifying polyvictims at all ages, including among preschoolers.

OBJECTIVE:To obtain national estimates of the degree to which school, police, and medical authorities are involved after children experience violence, abuse, and crime victimizations.DESIGN:A cross-sectional, national telephone survey involving a target sample of 4549 children and youth conducted from January 1, 2008, through May 31, 2008.SETTING:Contiguous United States.PARTICIPANTS:Children and adolescents aged 10 to 17 years and the parents of children aged 0 to 9 years.OUTCOME MEASURES:Conventional crime, maltreatment, abuse by peer and siblings, sexual abuse, and witnessing and indirect exposure to violence.RESULTS:A total of 45.7% of children and adolescents who had experienced violence in the past year had at least 1 of their victimization incidents known to school, police, or medical authorities. For serious victimizations, such as sexual abuse by an adult, kidnapping, and gang assaults, authorities knew about 70.1% or more of the incidents. Awareness, however, was low for peer and sibling victimizations, dating violence, and completed and attempted rape. In general, school authorities knew about victimizations more often (42.3%) than police (12.7%) or medical authorities (1.8%). However, police were the most likely to know about kidnapping, neglect, and sexual abuse by any adult. Medical authorities were most likely to know about sexual abuse by any adult, gang assault, physical abuse by a caretaker, and assault with a weapon.CONCLUSIONS:More incidents of victimization and abuse appear to be known to authorities currently than was the case in a comparable 1992 survey, but officials should improve at identifying a large quantity of victimizations of children and adolescents that appear to go undetected.

Children are exposed to violence every day in their homes, schools, and com-munities. Such exposure can cause them significant physical, mental, and emotional harm with long-term effects that can last well into adulthood.The Attorney General launched Defend-ing Childhood in September 2010 to unify the Department of Justice’s efforts to address children’s exposure to vio-lence under one initiative. Through Defending Childhood, the Department is raising public awareness about the issue and supporting practitioners, researchers, and policymakers as they seek solutions to address it. A compo-nent of Defending Childhood, OJJDP’s Safe Start Initiative continues efforts begun in 1999 to enhance practice, research, training and technical assis-tance, and public education about chil-dren and violence. Under Safe Start, OJJDP conducted the National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence, the most comprehensive effort to date to measure the extent and nature of the violence that children endure and its consequences on their lives. This is the first study to ask chil-dren and caregivers about exposure to a range of violence, crime, and abuse in children’s lives.As amply evidenced in this bulletin series, children’s exposure to violence is pervasive and affects all ages. The research findings reported here and in the other bulletins in this series are critical to informing our efforts to protect children from its damaging effects.

Much of the existing research on the prevalence and consequences of peer victimization focuses on “bullying” at school, often omitting from consideration non-bullying types of peer victimization as well as events that occur outside of school. The purpose of this study was to examine past-year exposure to peer-perpetrated victimization, occurring both within and outside of school contexts, among school-aged children in the United States. The study is based on a representative sample of 2,999 youth ages 6–17 (50% female; 45% non-white) from the 2008 National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV). Findings revealed age, gender, race, and family structure variations in many forms of peer victimization and demonstrated significant independent and cumulative effects of six different types of peer victimization (physical assault, physical intimidation, emotional victimization, sexual victimization, property crime, and internet harassment) on trauma symptoms. Findings also showed that, although victimization at school is substantial, a considerable proportion of peer victimizations occur away from school contexts. The findings highlight the importance of comprehensive measurement of multiple forms of peer victimization that occur both at school and elsewhere, rather than focusing exclusively on traditional measures of school-focused bullying.

A Message from OJJDP: Children are exposed to violence every day in their homes, schools, and communities. Such exposure can cause them significant physical, mental, and emotional harm with long-term effects that can last well into adulthood. The Attorney General launched Defending Childhood in September 2010 to unify the Department of Justice’s efforts to address children’s exposure to violence under one initiative. Through Defending Childhood, the Department is raising public awareness about the issue and supporting practitioners, researchers, and policymakers as they seek solutions to address it. A component of Defending Childhood, OJJDP’s Safe Start initiative continues efforts begun in 1999 to enhance practice, research, training and technical assistance, and public education about children and violence. Under Safe Start, OJJDP conducted the National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence, the most comprehensive effort to date to measure the extent and nature of the violence that children endure and its consequences on their lives. This is the first study to ask children and caregivers about exposure to a range of violence, crime, and abuse in children’s lives. As amply evidenced in this bulletin series, children’s exposure to violence is pervasive and affects all ages. The research findings reported here and in the other bulletins in this series are critical to informing our efforts to protect children from its damaging effects

Using two waves of the Developmental Victimization Survey (DVS), this research examined the effects of different forms of child victimization on changes in self-concept in a national sample of 11- to 18-year-old youth. Specifically, we (a) assessed the independent effects of past-year sexual victimization, nonsexual child maltreatment, peer victimization, and nonvictimization adversity on changes in mastery and self-esteem, (b) investigated the effects of these stressors on levels of depressive symptoms, and (c) determined the extent to which changes in mastery and/or self-esteem mediate associations between victimization and depression. Results indicate that only sexual victimization independently reduced self-esteem, and there were no significant changes in mastery in response to victimization exposure. Declines in self-esteem partially mediated the association between past-year sexual victimization exposure and levels of depressive symptoms. Strong direct effects of each form of victimization and nonvictimization adversity on depression were also evident. Results suggest that sexual victimization experiences may have uniquely powerful effects on self-esteem that are not apparent for other types of victimization and stress.

OBJECTIVE:The objectives of this research were to (1) obtain estimates of child maltreatment and other forms of personal, witnessing of, and indirect victimization among children aged 0 to 1 year in the United States and (2) examine associations between infant victimization exposure and the infant's level of emotional and behavioral symptoms.METHODS:The study is based on a cross-sectional national telephone survey that included caregivers of a sample of 503 children under 2 years of age.RESULTS:Nearly one-third of the sample of infants (31.6%) had experienced some form of personal, witnessing, or indirect form of victimization. The rate of infant maltreatment by caregivers (2.1%) was significantly lower than among older preschool-aged children. However, the rate of infant assault by siblings was considerable at 15.4%. The greatest risk of assault occurred in households with young siblings; nearly 35% of the infants with a sibling aged 2 to 3 years were assaulted in the year before the interview. Witnessing family violence was also relatively common among the infants (9.5%). Victimization was associated with emotional and behavioral problems; sibling assault and witnessing family violence had the highest correlations with infant symptom scores.CONCLUSION:The results of this study highlight the need for attention to infant victimization that considers a wider array of victimization sources and a broader scope of prevention efforts than has been typical in the child-maltreatment field.

BACKGROUND:Most studies of children's exposure to violence focus on separate, relatively narrow categories of victimization (such as sexual abuse, physical maltreatment, or bullying), paying less attention to exposure to multiple forms of victimization.PURPOSE:This study documents children's lifetime exposure to multiple victimization types (i.e., "poly-victimization") and examines the association between poly-victimization and extent of trauma symptomatology.METHODS:Analyses were based on telephone interviews conducted between January 2008 and May 2008 with a nationally representative sample of 4053 children aged 2-17 years and their caregivers.RESULTS:Exposure to multiple forms of victimization was common. Almost 66% of the sample was exposed to more than one type of victimization, 30% experienced five or more types, and 10% experienced 11 or more different forms of victimization in their lifetimes. Poly-victims comprise a substantial portion of the children who would be identified by screening for an individual victimization type, such as sexual assault or witnessing parental violence. Poly-victimization is more highly related to trauma symptoms than experiencing repeated victimizations of a single type and explains a large part of the associations between individual forms of victimization and symptom levels.CONCLUSIONS:Studies focusing on single forms of victimization are likely to underestimate the full burden of victimization that children experience and to incorrectly specify the risk profiles of victims. Research, clinical practice, and intervention strategies are likely to improve with more comprehensive assessments of victimization exposure.

Objective: To examine the co-occurrence of witnessing partner violence with child mal-treatment and other forms of victimizationMethod: Data are from the National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV), a nationally representative telephone survey of the victimization experiences of 4,549 youth aged 0-17Results: Witnessing partner violence (WPV) is very closely associated with several forms of maltreatment and exposure to other forms of family violence in this sample, with adjusted OR ranging from 3 88 to 9.15 WPV is also significantly associated with a wide variety of other forms of victimization. with OR ranging from I 43 to 7 32 More than 1/3 (33 9%) of youth who witnessed partner violence had also been maltreated in the past year, compared with 8 6% of non-witnesses. For lifetime data, more than half (56.8%) of WPV youth had also been maltreated Neglect and custodial interference were most closely associated with WPVConclusions: These data support the poly-victimization model, indicating that many youth experience multiple forms of victimization They also indicate that the various forms of family violence are especially closely linkedPractice implications: These results provide new urgency to calls to better integrate services to adult and child victims of family violence For example, screening to identify the needs of child witnesses could be done in domestic violence shelters, and screening to identify the needs of adult victims could be done in child protective service sett rags (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved

The current study examines the effects of child internalizing and externalizing symptoms on increases in victimization over a 1-year period. Using longitudinal data from the Developmental Victimization Survey (DVS), analyses are based on a national probability sample of 1,467 children aged 2-17. Results indicate that children with high levels of co-occurring internalizing and externalizing symptoms were particularly likely to experience increased exposure to several forms of victimization, including peer victimization, maltreatment, and sexual victimization, controlling for earlier victimization and adversity. The relationship of symptoms to victimization exposure differed across developmental stage. Elementary school-age children with high levels of symptoms were especially vulnerable to victimization by peers, whereas distressed youth in early adolescence were particularly vulnerable to sexual victimization. Mental health problems in childhood and adolescence appear to represent important risk factors for increased victimization. Future interventions might consider targeting youth with co-occurring internalizing and externalizing symptoms during especially vulnerable developmental stages.