Key Findings in Safe & Sound’s Child Abuse Study

Drawing upon more than two decades of experience in the financial sector, Darrach Bourke is a financial advisor with Emerson Equity in San Mateo, California. From 2006 to 2015, Darrach Bourke served on the board of directors for the San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center, now known as Safe & Sound.

Established in 1973 by Dr. Moses Grossman in conjunction with a national movement to develop best practices and policies concerning child abuse prevention and response, Safe & Sound provides support to families and collaborates with community organizations and government agencies in child protection advocacy efforts. In March 2019, it released a first-of-its-kind report, “The Economics of Child Abuse: A Study in California,” to highlight the importance of these advocacy efforts.

Among other key findings, the report found that there are almost 500,000 reports of child abuse in the state per year, which equals roughly one report per minute. In 2017, there were 71,289 victims (one in 19 children) of child abuse and this cost California $19.31 billion, although due to significant underreporting, it was estimated that the actual cost could be more than $280 billion. The former figure was derived by multiplying the number of substantiated survivors of child abuse (71,156) by an estimated lifetime cost per child of $268,544. A total of $207.02 million was added to account for the cost of the 133 child fatalities as a result of maltreatment in 2017.