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Maine Children's Alliance

Substantiated child abuse STATE in Maine

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Why This Indicator Matters

All children deserve to grow up in homes that are safe and emotionally nurturing. Children who experience adverse childhood experiences such as physical and emotional abuse have difficulty in school, and have more issues in mental health and physical health both as children and as adults. Although we hope substantiated child abuse goes down because there is less child abuse in families, it could also mean that the resources to investigate and evaluate reports of child abuse are inadequate to accurately assess the cases that are referred for investigation.

What the data shows
Overall, the number  of substantiated child abuse victims from 2017 to 2020 increased from 3,292 victims to 4,5388 victims, or an increase of 33% over three years. 2019 was the highest number (4,4547) and rate since 2003.




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Data Provided By

Definitions: The number and rate of individual victims of child abuse and neglect ages 0-17 for whom assessment led to a finding of a threat to a child’s health or welfare by physical, mental or emotional injury or impairment, sexual abuse or exploitation, deprivation of essential needs or lack of protection from these by a person responsible for the child (22 MRSA §4002). The numerator is the unique number of children in a calendar year who are victims of child maltreatment as defined above and the denominator is the number of children in the state ages 0 -17. The rate is per 1,000 children ages 0-17. Data is for calendar years.

Data Source: Maine DHHS, Office of Child & Family Services, Division of Child Welfare

Footnotes: Updated September 2021
County rates are available as a separate indicator for 2017-2020.