Child Abuse and Its Consequences: A Multinominal Logistic Regression Model Approach

Abstract

Children are the bedrock of any society and as such needs to be properly brought up and adequately handled. Children are the greatest assurance of the continuity of human race, without children there will be no race tomorrow. In the technology age of today, children are becoming more vulnerable members among adults in the society. This research evaluated the effects and consequences of child abuse in our environment using Oyo state as a case study and also and proffer possible and practicable solutions to the problem from the study. The population of the study comprises of children within a specific age bracket in Oyo State using Ibadan as a case study, in which four public and private schools four secondary schools were selected purposively due to accessibility and readiness to provide necessary information needed for the research work. Moreover to get more valid data source, a secondary data were also collected from the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps through the department of Antihuman Traffic and Child Protection unit which was utilized by fitting a multinomial logistic regression model.  The analysis revealed different forms of child abuse melted out on children by parents, teachers and guidance. Some of the abuse and consequences were attributed to poverty, ignorance, parental income, parental occupation and inadequacies in protection of children while others may be seen as deliberate act by the parent/guardians that look like correcting measure but it is still child abuse. Also, domestic violence and child neglect have various forms of consequences such as sexual transmitted diseases, stigmatization, school drop-out, abortion and unwanted pregnancy; all these were significant to the explanatory variables under consideration.

Keyword: Child Abuse, Domestic violence, Multinomial Logistic Regression Model,  Stigmatization and Poverty