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03/18/25 - The Division of Youth Services reported that child abuse and neglect cases rose 17.58% from 455 cases in fiscal year 2023 to 535 cases in fiscal year 2024, while child victims’ accusations—both primary and secondary—increased by 24.49% from 1,184 to 1,474 during the same period.
During a recent meeting with the CNMI chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, DYS director Vivian Sablan explained that secondary child victims’ accusations are typically other children in the case who are indirectly affected by the abuse as opposed to direct victims.
“There's also a thing called indirect, but they are classified as secondary because they also suffer the emotional abuse, the other stuff that comes along in, for example, sexual abuse.”
FY 2023-2024 data from DYS also showed that physical abuse went up from 115 to 116, sexual abuse decreased from 109 to 95, emotional abuse rose from 257 to 266, neglect in general from 203 to 258, and others (support services, teen pregnancy, domestic violence, minor sex trafficking, truancy, suicidal) grew from 190 to 297.
During the SPJ meeting DYS also acknowledged how down economic times have an effect in the family dynamic specially when it comes to child abuse and neglect cases.
“We know for sure that there is a correlation. When parents are stressed, a lot of things can happen in the home or not happen. For example, neglect. Sometimes medical needs are not paid attention to. Food, maybe the living environment, conditions of the home. But it does have a correlation,” said Sablan.
And it also trickles down to illegal drug use.
“Also, with drugs. So far for this year, we had a total of three babies that were born positive with meth in their system. We also had 28 calls of possible drug concerns in the home. So that's where we go in and we just see if there's drug use and just to make sure that the kids are safe. So that's another issue that we're having,” she added.
The CNMI being multi-cultural also poses a challenge for DYS as Child Protection Services caseworker II Juanicia Villanueva about five years ago—believe it or not—they had to deal with a case of waterboarding.
"I forgot what culture was [and what] islands they [came from, but] waterboarding was okay for them... I mean regardless of the background they come from, we still have to teach the parents and educate them about, you know, the difference between abuse and discipline,” she said.
Villanueva reminded parents that times have changed and what was acceptable before isn’t acceptable now and what’s acceptable in their home country isn’t acceptable in the U.S.
“Even me, even us, right, 20 years ago it was okay what our parents did to us, but that has changed. It's 2025, so, you know, we kind of tell them you got to put those disciplining methods, and I know culture plays a big part, but like I said, we've evolved. We're living in 2025.”
Sablan explained that probably another reason for the rise in number of child abuse and neglect cases the past couple of years is DYS being more effective in its awareness campaigns.
“We like to look at it as our awareness being better. The community is more comfortable. You know, we used to be thought of as people that broke families apart. People are afraid of us. We take their children away. But we're trying to change that mindset, you know, and being able to make the families be as comfortable as they can be coming to us. Not necessarily wait until something happens, but to come to us for help and support. We've invested a lot. You know, there's a lot of funding that is also going to prevention.”
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Story by Mark Rabago
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