Quote:
Originally Posted by Kanji_The_Wanderer
Then why did that new report say something different, it said that it rose. I am now confused...
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Okay, here is what I mean.
For years, schools, other parents, etc, turned a blind eye toward abuse. They would say or think "Well, they`re not my kids. I don`t want to meddle..." etc. So of course, they cases were not reported to the police or anyone else. They were happening, but if it isn`t reported to the police or a social worker, it doesn`t get counted.
Recently, there has been a huge movement to stop child abuse and to help the children. So a lot of people no longer consider it "meddling" and they DO report these things to the police or to the children`s health organizations. So even though there are fewer actual cases of abuse, more of them are being counted.
The same thing with drunk driving recently. The cases haven`t actually increased - the police are just actually pulling people over for it where before they`d pretend not to see.
It`s sort of like if you have a bag of apples, and only count the ones on the very top, the ones you can see without moving anything - let`s say 4 - and say "There are 4 apples in my bag!". You keep eating the apples, and the bag is now only half full... You can still only see 4 apples at the top though. This time, for some reason, you decide to take all the apples out and count them. You now have 20 apples! The number of apples has increased!! But it really hasn`t, in fact, you only have half the apples that you started with. You have just gotten better at counting them.
That`s what has happened in this case.