The Balkan Epidemiological Study on Child Abuse and Neglect (BECAN) in Romania

BECAN (Balkan Epidemiological Study on Child Abuse and Neglect) is an epidemiological study aiming at mapping child abuse and neglect (CAN) in the general population of 11-13-16-year-old children that attend school and those that have dropped out of school in 9 Balkan countries. Mapping of CAN was achieved by applying two of the I-CAST questionnaires (ICAST-CH for children and ICAST-P for parents, created by ISPCAN with the support of UNICEF) to matched pairs of children and parents. In Romania, 5,955 children 4,236 parents completed the questionnaire and the sample was representative of the population of the 5th, 7th and 10th grade students (ages 10-17, most of them 11, 13 and 16 years old) from Romania. Regarding the results, according to both children and parents, psychological abuse is the most prevalent CAN form (65.8% of children and 62.6% of parents reported it). Physical abuse has a high frequency as well, both according to children (44.8%) and parents (46.8%). Neglect was minimized by parents (6.8%), while according to children, the percentage of neglect was 19.4%. Sexual abuse was minimized by parents as well (5.1% of children vs. 2.7% of parents), especially in the case of boys (5.5% of boys vs. 2.1% of parents). Sexual contact abuse is less known to parents, compared with non-contact sexual forms. Generally, parents reported less abuse against girls than the girls themselves. Regarding boys, parents reported more physical and psychological abuse than the boys themselves.

Keywords: child abuse and neglect, epidemiological study, prevalence