The central finding was that retrospective reports of abuse by the sample of at-risk youth showed poor agreement with documented CPS determinations of abuse. Much of this disparity can be explained by high rates of new reports by adolescents during the interview of abuse experiences unknown to or not determined as abuse by CPS authorities. By adolescent self-report, the prevalence rates of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse were four to six times higher than those obtained from CPS records. According to estimates from the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, only about one third of maltreated children, known to community professionals were reported to CPS. Psychological abuse, in particular, is likely to be underreported, and if accepted for investigation, under substantiated, due, in part, to concerns about more serious abuse which takes a higher priority. Limited concordance between adolescent self-report and CPS records, reflected by the higher prevalence rates for self-report was likely due to false negatives associated with CPS records, rather than false positives resulting from the self-report methodology. More troubling was the relatively high rate of adolescents who failed to report abuse that had been documented in the CPS records. Directly questioned about their childhood experiences, adolescents failed to disclose having experienced abuse in 20 of 45 cases where there was some determination by CPS that physical, sexual, or psychological abuse likely occurred. Some abuse was forgotten because of a young age at which it occurred, most of the discrepant cases were adolescents who likely failed to report documented and probable cause of abuse. The sample included 350 early adolescents, ages 12 to 13 years, who were identified prior to age 2 as being an elevated risk of maltreatment. Table, references