I am sending you this letter on behalf of my concern for children who are being abused. I would like you and the rest of Maine to know how many children in America are abused, both sexually and physically.

Maine needs to realize how many children get hurt every day. Eighteen thousand children are permanently disabled each year from being physically abused by someone who watches them. Each day, five children in the U.S. are murdered by a parent or a caretaker. For example, in 2000, 2,250 children a month were reported to have been victims of child abuse in Orange County, Calif., alone.

Head trauma is the leading cause in child abuse among babies, including Shaken Baby Syndrome; 25 percent of these children die and many suffer from brain damage.

Some people don’t give a single thought as to whom is getting hurt and how. There are so many children in pain, and they are in this very country. I say we try to stop that!

Statistics show that 60 percent of teenage mothers report having been sexually abused as a child. Seventy percent of incestuous fathers were sexually abused as children. An outrageous number of death row inmates claim to have been raised in a violent and abusive environment.

I would like everybody to stop and think, just for five minutes, how they would feel if they were one of those children who gets abused.

Christina Berube, Auburn