5.4 million students skip school at some point in the year due to bullying. You can help stop bullying behavior at your school by utilizing the 3 safety rules: RECOGNIZE, REFUSE, REPORT

RECOGNIZE when “just joking” crosses the line into bully behavior. There are 5 major types of bullying: Physical, Verbal, Sexual, Social, & Cyberbullying.

REFUSE to participate in bully behavior. If you are being bullied, you can refuse bully behavior by: ignoring the bullying and walking away, not reacting to the bullying or not fighting back, standing up to the bullying or getting a group of friends to help you stand up to the bullying, or reporting the bully behavior to a trusted adult.

If you are a bystander of bullying, you can refuse bully behavior by talking to the person being bullied in private and offering support, confronting the person doing the bullying, labeling their behavior as bullying, and telling them it’s not acceptable or reporting the bully behavior to a trusted adult.

REPORT bullying situations to a trusted adult when things get to be too much for you to handle.

Child Abuse Awareness

Nationally, an estimated 678,000 children, or 9.2 victims per 1,000 children, were victims of abuse and neglect in 2018.

There are 4 major types of child abuse: Physical, Verbal/Emotional, Sexual, and Neglect

Physical: Hitting, whooping, spanking, or beating a child too hard and leaving a mark

Verbal/Emotional: Calling a child names, making them feel worthless or unloved

Sexual: An adult touching a child on the private parts of their body for no good reason, an adult making a child touch them on the private parts of their body, showing them pictures or movies of adults who are naked, or any type of sexual activity between an adult and child under the age of 18.

Neglect: When a parent cannot give a child enough food or shelter, leaves them alone a lot, does not take them to the doctor or to school

Perpetrators

A perpetrator is the person who is responsible for the abuse or neglect of a child.

• 54% of perpetrators were female, 45% of perpetrators were male, 0.9% were unknown gender
• 83% of perpetrators were between the ages of 18-44 years. Perpetrators in the age group 25–34 are 41.9 percent of all perpetrators.
• 91.7% of victims were maltreated by one or both parents, either together, alone, or with others