On Wednesday, December 17th, my group members and I headed to Washington Square Park to conduct several interviews with random people, as a way of collecting information about the general public’s knowledge of child abuse. In addition to collecting new data for ourselves to learn from and use, we also aimed to educate those that we interviewed, as a way of spreading knowledge in an attempt to put an end to the regularity of child abuse. We had written three short thought provoking questions that we took turns asking to men and women in the park. In the beginning, it was very intimidating to approach a completely unfamiliar person and ask them to be interviewed as well as recorded. When we said “Excuse me, would you have a minute to answer some questions?” I noticed that each person insisted on knowing what it was that we were interviewing about. Once we told them it was about child abuse, the majority of the people hesitantly agreed, while a few declined. After asking the interviewee our three questions, about their knowledge of what child abuse is and why it is so prevalent, we handed out a page of child abuse statistics in the U.S. This was a successful tactic for filling in the gaps in the knowledge of child abuse that each person had. As we conducted more and more interviews, I began to feel much more comfortable approaching people, although I did get a little bit nervous each time. In all, amongst the four of us, we conducted around 10 successful interviews, and collected a great amount of information.

After conducting the interviews, I learned that many New York inhabitants are familiar with what child abuse is, but are not quite sure of why it is as prevalent as it is, and what can be done to stop it. While men and women knew what child abuse was, I still noticed that when asked to define “child abuse” in their own words, many of the interviewees immediately thought of physical abuse, while none of them mentioned sexual abuse, and few mentioned emotional abuse. When asked why child abuse is common, men and women tended to either be completely unsure, or make educated guesses. In response to our question: “What would you do if you suspected child abuse?” most people simply said “I would report it, of course.” While this is a fair answer, I wondered how many people would actually do as they said they would. Would they know where to report it? Would they be scared to or think that it isn’t their own business? I know this is a common issue, because Marion White, the director of CAPP, told us that 80% of child abuse cases go unreported.

Overall, from all of the information that we gathered, I have concluded that a major way in which boys and girls like us can prevent child abuse, is to inform others of it, and specifically, what can be done to report a suspected case. There is a child abuse hotline, which accepts all reports, that then forwards cases to organizations such as ACS to be further investigated. People need to know that if you suspect child abuse, “It’s not my business” is not a valid excuse to not report it. By letting men and women know this, we are becoming closer and closer to making child abuse a less prevalent issue in the United States.