Gaza, ALRAY - A total of 1,273,804 children in (Israel) suffered abuse, violence or neglect, according to a study conducted by the Israeli National Council for Children (NCC) and Haifa University, released on Tuesday. 

The official statistics released by the authorities cite around 50,000 reports of child abuse every year is a gross underestimation of reality.

Professors Zvi Izikowitz and Rachel Lev-Weisel found that 17.6% of all children surveyed for the three-year study had experienced sexual abuse. Direct from a sample of 8,239 Jewish children and 2,274 Arab children were examined in one of the most in-depth studies of child abuse ever.

Findings show that while 48.5% of children in public schools reported that they had experienced some form of abuse, 67.7% of Arab children were also abused. Children from religious schools were not sampled.

The government, which only counts the cases that are actually reported, stated that only 1.9% of all children had been victims of abuse, whereas these figures suggest that 48.5% of all children had been abused.

Over two-thirds of abused children had reported the case to someone, in most cases a friend or family member. One-third reported it to a teacher, and a little over a tenth had reported it to a social worker. 43% of those who had reported the abuse said that the situation had not changed afterwards. 

The study showed that Jewish boys were more likely to be emotionally and physically abuse, while Jewish girls were more likely to experience sexual and domestic violence, with 81.3% of the abusers being men. Abuse was most likely to occur from someone within the family.

Worldbulletin.net contributed.