Sexual Violence Against Children: UN Report Says Over One In 10 Girls Raped Or Sexually Abused By Age 20

More than 10 percent of women worldwide are raped or sexually abused by age 20, according to a new report from the United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF.

The report, which draws on data from 190 countries, also found that a significant proportion of adolescent girls were first-time victims of sexual violence before age 15, with Latin America and African countries being the nations with the highest incidence per-capita of such incidents. Overall the organization says that 120 million girls around the world are raped or sexually assaulted by age 20.

Disturbingly, among adolescent girls who were subjected to sexual violence, the most likely perpetrator was an intimate partner. Likewise, in almost all countries, parents, teachers and other caregivers are the most commonly cited perpetrators of physical violence against young girls.

UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake said that violence “cuts across boundaries of age, geography, religion, ethnicity and income brackets. It occurs in places where children should be safe, their homes, schools and communities. Increasingly, it happens over the internet, and it's perpetrated by family members and teachers, neighbors and strangers and other children.'”

The use of violence as a method of discipline within the home is widespread, according to the UNICEF data. It suggests that young children are just as likely as older children to be exposed to physical violence. The report holds up the example of Panama, where the use of violent discipline is not uncommon even with one-year-olds.

The grim extent of the problem of child homicide victims is also laid out by the report, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. The report says that the region has the largest share of homicides of children and adolescents in the world. And, the three countries with the highest homicide rates among children are El Salvador, Guatemala and Venezuela. The report states that 95,000 children and teenagers were murdered in 2012 alone.

This is the first time that such comprehensive data have been gathered from so many different countries on this topic, according to the BBC.