Abstract Religious beliefs can foster, encourage, and justify child abuse, yet religious motivations for child abuse and neglect have been virtually ignored in social science research. In this paper, we compare victims' retrospective reports of religion-related child physical abuse to other reported cases of child physical abuse. We describe in statistical detail the nature and circumstances of the abuse, characteristics of victims and perpetrators, and the spiritual and psychological impact of the abuse. Results indicate that although the basic characteristics of religion-related physical abuse are similar to nonreligion- related physical abuse, religion-related abuse has significantly more negative implications for its victims' long-term psychological well-being. (PDF file, about 40 pages) Bette Bottoms, Phd, University of Chicago