National Child Abuse Prevention Month

ZANESVILLE, OH – April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month.

It is a month dedicated to bringing awareness to the victims and survivors of this abuse. Muskingum County Prosecutor, Ron Welch, said that child abuse can happen happen in any city, regardless of it’s size.

He also talked about some of the different signs that comes along with a child abuse case.

“Child abuse for children, there are different types of abuse. There’s physical abuse and then there’s sexual abuse,” Welch said. “Physical abuse are unexplained bumps, bruises, and injuries or injuries that children have that don’t quite meet the story. Sometimes, children will have a story about how they were injured, but it doesn’t seem like that would be how the injury would’ve normally come about.”

Prosecutor Welch said if a child has been abused sexually the signs to watch for are the child being withdrawn from normal activities, lack of trust, or over sexualized behavior from a child.

He also said locally there has been an increase of child abuse cases.

“Part of that is due to the fact that, for a number of years Muskingum County lacked a child advocacy center. Which was a center that was specially designed to interview children who have been victims of abuse,” Welch said. “Now that we’ve had that for a few years, people are able to go to a local center and have children interviewed by experts there.”

Welch said that if you suspect that a child is a victim of abuse to report it to either children services or local law enforcement. To show your support for National Child Abuse Prevention Month throughout the month, you can wear the color blue.