Over 1,000 child abuse victims in 2023

The Department of Community and Cultural Affairs’ Division of Youth Services reports that after comparing the number of child abuse and neglect cases from fiscal year 2020 and 2023, the number of incidences reported have doubled with DYS currently trending to over 1,000 child abuse victims.

As DYS is gearing up to celebrate Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention and Awareness Month this month, DYS director Vivian Sablan shared in an interview yesterday that it is important to educate the community on how prevalent the issue really is in the CNMI.

Sablan shared that for the past few years, DYS has been maintaining consistent child abuse and neglect reports since FY2020 adding that when comparing the number of cases from FY2020 to FY2023, the numbers are alarming.

Specifically, in FY2020, DYS received 271 child abuse and neglect cases. Meanwhile, in FY2023, DYS had 459 cases. With the 459 cases, DYS is currently tending to 1,214 child abuse victims.

“That’s a big jump. But what’s more alarming is that we’re dealing with over 1,000 victims compared to 700 in FY 2020. These are primary and secondary victims. Primary victims are the ones who were directly affected by the abuse, while secondary victims are either the siblings or children who were affected emotionally by witnessing the abuse,” she said.

Breaking down the number of cases in FY2023; DYS received 245 emotional abuse cases, 202 neglect cases, 115 physical abuse cases, 103 sexual abuse cases, and 148 other cases (this includes domestic violence, minor sex trafficking, truancy, teen pregnancy, etc.).

“We’ve noticed people are more comfortable to report as we’re out there doing outreach programs,” Sablan noted.

Sablan said that it’s a struggle to provide long-term help for all the victims—especially with only 12 case workers between all three islands—but thanks to its partners, DYS is able to move forward and help as much as they can.

“I feel like we will never have [enough resources], but we try to leverage resources so that’s why we work closely with our partners because we cannot do it alone. We only have eight case workers right now active in Saipan, two on Tinian, and two on Rota. Although we want to help families long term, while we work on these cases, we have new cases coming in. It really is a struggle for the staff, but we have great partners, we share resources, we tap into them for expertise, and we are able to move forward and help serve families,” Sablan said.

When asked how the community can help, Sablan said it’s best that members of the community take advantage of DYS’ outreach programs to learn more about how common child abuse is in the CNMI so they, too, can help spread awareness.

“It’s all about getting the community to be aware of what the issue are and not only being aware, but to acknowledge that it exists. We cannot just deny that we have [child abuse cases], as it is very heavily seen here. We don’t want to be perceive as the division that takes away children from their homes, we want the community to know that we’re here to help. We’re just here to intervene, provide the necessary services, make sure the children are safe, and our ultimate goal is to reunify families,” she said.