Child sex abuse rate hurts NZ scorecard

New Zealand’s child sex abuse rates are among the world’s worst.

Ranked 32nd out of 188 countries on a range of global health measures, New Zealand’s score for childhood sexual abuse was a shocking two out of 100.

Only six other countries did as badly or worse, the United Nations (UN) report showed.

Professor Janet Fanslow, of Auckland University, said our terrible score on child sex abuse was not surprising.

Legislation and policies around sexual violence and child protection lacked prevention measures and wrongly treated sexual abuse as a problem affecting only a small number of people.

Overweight children and a high rate of deaths, due to the forces of nature, also dragged New Zealand’s ranking down.

Singapore was top of the index with 86.8, followed by Iceland on 86 and Sweden on 85.6. New Zealand was 32nd on the index with a score of 71 (rounded).

The United Kingdom placed 10th with 80, while Australia was 11th, also with 80. The median index score was 56.7.

New Zealand scored maximum points – meaning we’re doing particularly well – on births attended by skilled health personnel, a low number of deaths due to air pollution, and household air quality.

Fanslow, who is a co-director of the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, said the UN data provided the ‘‘most robust international comparison’’, and thus the clearest picture of New Zealand’s child sex abuse problem.

The UN study measured 37 health-related sustainable development goal indicators between 1990 and 2016. Self-reported survey data was used, as was data from relevant national health surveys and violence-specific surveys.

The UN defined childhood sexual abuse as the prevalence of men and women aged 18-29 who had experienced sexual violence by the age of 18.

New Zealand's score for childhood sexual abuse was a shocking two out of 100.

In New Zealand, one in four girls experienced sexual violence by the age of 15, Fanslow said.

‘‘If you think about it as a population problem, then we need to ask some bigger questions about what we tell people about sex, healthy relationships and power.’’

She said legislation to tackle child sex abuse focused too heavily on response rather than prevention, and was likely to blame for our horrific score.

‘‘We act like kids are out there being vulnerable on their own.

‘‘With [better] policy comes investment and the priority that we place on the programmes that flow out to education or community-based prevention strategies ... We can fix this.’’