Free guide · Scarlet Beast En español →

If a child is being hurt

For people in the United States who are worried about a child. For the adult a child just told. For kids and teens who are being hurt. For parents who are afraid of what they might do. And for adults it happened to long ago. What counts as abuse or neglect. The signs. What to say when a child tells you. How to report, with your state’s number. Free people to talk to first, at any hour. Take only what you need.

If someone checks your phone or computer: this page saves nothing, but your browser remembers that you opened it. The Leave quickly button in the corner, or pressing Esc twice, swaps this page for a weather site. It does not clear your history. A private or incognito window, or a library or school computer, leaves less behind.

This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No doctor, social worker, child protection worker, lawyer or survivor of abuse has reviewed it, and it was not written by someone who has lived this: an AI has not, and cannot know what it is like. The facts come from pages read on October 6, 2026: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc.gov: about child abuse and neglect, about child sexual abuse, about abusive head trauma, and preventing child abuse and neglect, all dated May 16, 2024); MedlinePlus, from the National Library of Medicine (medlineplus.gov: Child Abuse and Child Sexual Abuse, and the encyclopedia articles on child physical abuse, child neglect and emotional abuse, and sexual abuse in children); the federal Child Welfare Information Gateway (childwelfare.gov: how to report, its topic page on child abuse and neglect, and its list of state reporting numbers); Childhelp (childhelphotline.org and childhelp.org/hotline); Nemours KidsHealth (kidshealth.org: its child abuse pages for parents, for kids and for teens); Stop It Now (stopitnow.org: its helpline page and “What should I do after a child tells?”); the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (missingkids.org: the CyberTipline; and takeitdown.ncmec.org); and the home pages of the National Parent & Youth Helpline and Crisis Text Line. The page says whose words it is passing on, and where two sources differ it says so or leaves the number out. The state numbers are shown only where Childhelp’s list and the federal list agreed; we did not call them. What is marked “ours” is our own suggestion and not from any of these. We did not read any state’s law. Numbers and hours change: if one does not work, call Childhelp or 911. The sentence about 988 was read on October 1, 2026. This page saves nothing: no account, no cookies, nothing you tick or choose is stored or sent, and no analytics (privacy). It is deliberately left off our “save for offline” list, because a saved copy is a trace. It was checked by programs, not yet used by people. Scarlet Beast is not a child protection agency, a clinic, a law office or a government agency, and takes no money from anyone named here. Found a mistake? Email [email protected].