Violated child costs $84,000

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

Each case of child sexual abuse costs the victim, the offender and the Government $84,175 on average, an Auckland researcher estimates.

Dr Shirley Julich, an Auckland University of Technology senior lecturer, has totted up the costs associated with child sexual abuse.

Included are GP visits, mental healthcare, loss of income for victim and offender, police, prison and court costs, ACC spending on counselling and the victims' pain, suffering and loss of enjoyment.

Based on research showing that 25 per cent of girls and 9 per cent of boys have been sexually abused, she calculates that 8200 children are abused for the first time each year. And on 1996 census data, there are likely to be 620,000 people alive who have been abused.

Dr Julich said US research showed that child sexual abuse victims were less likely to gain formal job qualifications and so earned 10 per cent less than those not sexually victimised as children.

For fulltimers that meant $3051 less a year.

"It's kind of crass really to be trying to put trauma into dollar terms," she said,

but to justify spending a lot of money on a programme, policy makers and analysts "need to have some assurance there will be a drop in the incidence of abuse".

Her estimate, updated to 2003 dollar values, is based on a 1994 costing of domestic violence, figures specific to child sexual abuse, overseas research and her own interviews with abuse victims.

Abuse costs

Costs per victim:

* Average lifetime cost to individuals and taxpayers is $84,175 in total.

Includes:

* Medical charges, victims' and offenders' lost income and other individual costs, $1545.

* State costs of healthcare, welfare, justice, $360.

* Victims' lost quality of life, $81,033.