Most of us can’t imagine what would make an daycare worker abuse a child, and the worse the behavior is, the more unimaginable it seems. But the incidence of daycare abuse against the very children they’re supposed to be caring for is a sad fact of human society. Whether the day care abuse is rooted in the perpetrator’s mental illness, substance abuse, or inability to cope, the psychological result for each abused child is often the same: deep emotional scars and a feeling of worthlessness.

In the United States, the federal legislation that sets minimum standards for how states handle daycare abuse defines abuse and neglect as “any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker, which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse, or exploitation, or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm.” In 2005, the most recent year for which the U.S. government has figures, 12.1 of every 1,000 American children, almost 900,000 in all, suffered abuse by adults. Every day, about four children die in the U.S. because of abuse or neglect, most of them babies or toddlers. And those are just the cases authorities know about: for every incidence of daycare abuse or neglect that gets reported, it’s estimated that two others go unreported.

There are four primary types of daycare abuse:

physical abuse
sexual abuse
emotional abuse
neglect

While the first two categories get the most attention, perhaps because they involve physical violence, neglect is far and away the most common form of child abuse, accounting for more than 60 percent of all cases of child maltreatment.

If you suspect that your child may be the victim of abuse, contact a child abuse attorney by calling 1 800 ATTORNEY today.