Homeschooling’s 

Invisible Children

Case Data

Since 2013, the Homeschooling’s Invisible Children database has analyzed instances of abuse in homeschooling environments in the form of case studies. In 2024, we completed a systematic qualitative and quantitative analysis of these data. Our November 2025 data release is below. Files will be updated quarterly with information on new cases. Case studies, and unreleased data, are available for download upon request. 

 

What you should know about this database

This database is based largely on incidents of abuse and neglect in homeschool settings that are reported in publicly available news sources. This has two major consequences:

  1. By definition, these are typically cases that were severe or unusual enough for a news outlet to consider them newsworthy. Consequently, this database likely overrepresents incidences of severe abuse and neglect in homeschool settings while underrepresenting less severe cases. 
  2. The cases in this dataset are nonetheless almost certain to undercount cases of this nature. Cases can take years or decades to come to light; some never do. When they do, reporting does not always mention that the victims were homeschooled. This dataset does not include cases that have not come to light or cases where the victims were homeschooled but were not reported as such. 

While these data can speak to the nature of some manifestations of abuse and neglect in homeschool settings, they cannot be taken to be representative of abuse/neglect in homeschooling as a whole, nor can they be taken as a complete accounting of cases of this nature. We encourage researchers to interpret the results appropriately. 

Criteria for inclusion

To be included in the database, a case must meet all the following criteria, as outlined in our reports of findings and codebook:

  1. The incident must have occurred in the United States or its territories.
  2. At least one victim or perpetrator age 5-18 must have been homeschooled at the time of the incident. Both legal homeschooling and claimed homeschooling count, regardless of whether they are following their state’s homeschool requirements. This is because insufficient homeschool oversight provisions often fail to respond when home educators do not adhere to state requirements.
  3. The incident must be publicly documented in at least two sources, at least one of which states that the child was homeschooled (or was claimed to be homeschooled). However, a non-fatality case may be included with only one source if the source is comprehensive.

We include incidents that took place in the time period ranging from the mass legalization of homeschool in the 1970s and 1980s until the present, although the bulk of cases occurred during or after the year 2000. We identify cases via monitoring of online news sources through Google News, and supplement data with documentation from court records, obituaries, and other publicly available sources.

Coding procedures

Volunteers and employees who code cases follow specific coding procedures that have been discussed and documented by the data team to ensure consistency.

Data Release 2.V1

Nov 1, 2025

This release includes a zip file with a codebook and seven data files:

  • The case detail file contains basic information about each case, such as location, various dates, how the case came to light and under what circumstances, numbers of fatalities involved, whether it was a fatality case, whether it involved withdrawal from school, and whether there was a history of contact with social services.
  • The sources file contains links to sources (e.g., news articles) for each case, including to archive.org if the source has been archived there.
  • The category overview dashboard file contains category coding for each case, e.g. whether the case involved abduction, fratricide, adoption, food deprivation, medical neglect, physical abuse, etc.
  • The fatalities file includes information about each homeschooled fatality victim (name, age, gender, state). Cases with multiple fatalities will have one row for each homeschooled victim.
  • If a case involved one or more homeschooled children being withdrawn from school prior to the incident, the withdrawal file contains additional information about the withdrawal(s), including information about the reason for the withdrawal (if known) and the timeline surrounding the withdrawal and afterward, leading up to but not including the incident itself.
  • The adoption file contains a line for each case involving adoption or fostering, nonparental guardians (both legal and nonlegal), and “other” cases (typically abduction or cult living situations). This file includes information about whether they were fostered prior to adoption, whether disability was involved in the case, and whether the case involved serial adopters of special needs children.
  • The singled out file looks at whether some children were singled out for more severe abuse or neglect or for different types of abuse.
 
 

Data and Codebook

Download Data and Codebook