One out of five California adults with children living in their homes were beaten, kicked or physically abused when they were children, and one in ten were sexually abused, according to data released recently by a children’s health foundation.

Experts believe that’s an undercount.

“I think it’s probably a low estimate,” said Cassandra Joubert, director of the Central California Children’s Institute at California State University, Fresno. “I think these kinds of events within families are hush-hush, swept under the rug, not really talked about.”

Focusing on the abuse that parents have experienced is essential to interrupting the cycle of trauma, Joubert said. Adults who were abused or neglected as children often end up emulating their own parents.

“It’s almost this mirroring effect,” Joubert said.

The data were recently released by kidsdata.org, a program of the Palo Alto-based Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, to coincide with a recent conference on adverse childhood experiences in San Francisco.

[For more of this story, written by Jocelyn Wiener, go to http://californiahealthline.or...d-abuse-as-children/]