For every Baby P, many more suffer.

Byline: Fiona Phillips 

STAGGERING is what I'd call it. Staggering that the most sickening report on child abuse that I've ever read was given a relatively tiny amount of coverage this week compared to the goings-on in Tory Damian Green's office at Westminster.

In case you missed it, the study - in medical journal The Lancet - revealed that one in 10 British children is the victim of maltreatment.

Just let that sink in a while, because basically it means that in our children's schools, three youngsters in every class of 30 are being molested, abused, or beaten by their parents or "carers".

The statistics are shocking, they are sickening, but they are also almost unbelievable.

Three children in your child's class are being abused.

Three sets of mums, dads, or both, in your child's class are abusing their children.

People you talk to every day, children your children play with, children you have round for tea.

Which ones are they? Who is being abused and who is abusing?

According to The Lancet - and this is horrifying - five to 10 per cent of girls have been raped and between one and five per cent of boys have faced the same ordeal.

And while the ramifications of the Baby P case are still making themselves heard, just think about this: social services don't even hear about most of the abused children in this country.

It's bad enough when they do know - Baby P after all, was on the at-risk register - but it's even worse to contemplate the fact that in the majority of cases they don't know anything at all, especially when the facts are that between four and 16 per cent of children suffer physical abuse - hitting, punching, beating and burning.

Even worse - if you define sexual abuse as ranging from being shown pornographic magazines to being raped - 15 per cent of girls can tell you what that's like, and so can five per cent of boys.

Up to 10 per cent of children suffer emotional abuse, because their parents make them feel worthless or unwanted.

And we wonder why children are becoming increasingly angry and violent.

We have to find better ways of identifying abuse.

Children will not tell us because being subjected to it on a daily basis conditions them to think it's normal.

It's not, and it's up to us to act - from mums in the playground to professionals such as teachers, social workers and police communicating and sharing their suspicions.

We owe it to the one million children abused in this country each year.

They are our future. So they deserve a past.

"We need better ways to identify abuse"