Child Abuse and School Violence among Preparatory School Children in Assiut Governorate

Child abuse is a major pediatric problem with deleterious short and long term effects that last into adulthood. The World Health Organization estimates that 40 million children aged below 15 years fall victims to violence each year, even though abused children tend to keep quiet, rather than reporting it. The phenomenon of widespread violence among schoolchildren becomes an issue that generates enormous public concern and has become a focus of prevention in nursing. Besides, every child has a right to be protected from harm and to feel safe and secure in an education environment. The aim of this study is to detect child abuse and school violence among preparatory Schoolchildren in Assiut Governorate. A cross-sectional descriptive design was used in carrying out this study. This study was carried out in (4) districts of Assiut governorate; Assiut and Manflot (North Assiut), El-fath (East Assiut), and El-Ghanyiem (South Assiut) districts which were selected randomly from a list of geographical districts to constitute Assiut governorate. The main city and one village were selected randomly from each of the selected districts; the total sample size was 1247 preparatory students from first, second, and third grade, of both sexes and their age ranged between 13 to 15 years old recruited through the multi- stage random sampling technique. Data were collected during the period from the beginning of November 2013 to the end of April 2014 through using the following tools : 1) - A simple questionnaire which was developed by the researcher to collect relevant information and 2)-A child abuse scale which was adapted from El-bheary and Abodeef Child abuse scale (2003) to assess the types and severity of child abuse. The results of this study revealed that, the majority (88.5%) of the studied children was subjected to mild sexual abuse, followed by mild physical abuse (81.6 %), followed by less than two thirds (63%) of them faced mild emotional abuse while about one third of them suffered of moderate emotional abuse and only a small percentage (3.4%, 3.3%, 2.6%) experienced severe emotional, physical or sexual abuse at schools respectively. Highly statistically significant differences were found between the exposure of studied children to physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, their and their parents’ characteristics, and their gender, grade level in preparatory schools, birth order, their mothers’ occupation and family size. The present study concluded that , preparatory school children in Assiut Governorate were subjected to different forms of mild violence at schools in both urban and rural areas that all schools need to pay attention to. Unfortunately, mild sexual abuse was the most prevalent form of violence among studied children in preparatory schools. Girls tend to be the main victims of all types of violence at schools. Some characteristics of studied children and their parents were associated significantly with all types of abuse. Large family size (more than 6 members) was foremost associated significantly with all types of abuse. The study recommended close supervision of the students at schools, especially girls, and developing an extensive afterschool program, such as different sports, club and social activities.