Below are the reported amount of cases of sexually abused child victims in each U.S. state required to report their data to the feds. The data is from 2015, source is https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/cm2015.pdf#page=59. I've manually added the data of child population in each State (also from 2015, except for Puerto Rico which is 2016 estimation). The population data is for <18 years old citizens. The population data doesn't include illegal immigrants. My purpose was to find out

which States have the highest amount of reported cases compared to the amount of minors

According to another study, about 13% of the actual cases are reported to the authorities nationwide. This percentage varies by state, but in nationwide level (see total) one should multiply the reported cases by 8 to get closer to the real amount of victims. But what I found more interesting in this data comparison was

the huge variance (from 0.395% to 0.014%) of victims reported compared to the child population If the data below was to be considered as accurate, this would mean one pedophile for one victim in the other end of the list, against 28 pedophiles for one victim in the other end. Even including a difference in the level of organized crime in different States, a gap this wide is hard to believe, supporting a theory that there's false reports included.

This is a worrying indicator of both low interest in the federal level to get more accurate data, and an indicator of low interest in the State level in some of the States to provide accurate data.

While the data concerns one of the most serious (and one of the most profitable) forms of criminality,

citizens should demand their authorities to develop and put in action better methods and demand local journalists to find out the reasons why the data doesn't match with the reality. This non-matching data might be an indicator of covering up the amount of actual reports in some of the States, giving false impression to the citizens (in purpose) about the seriousness of the problem.

Statistics (2015), in order of most reports per popula

(States on top have the highest level of reporting, not necessarily the highest level of pedophilia)

State - Child population - Reports - reports/pop(%)

Vermont 119923 474 0.395%
Arkansas 705300 1904 0.270%
Utah 912496 2023 0.222%
Tennessee 1497611 2687 0.179%
Ohio 2628477 4683 0.178%
Indiana 1579456 2670 0.169%
Illinois 2958673 4495 0.152%
Alabama 1103496 1472 0.133%
Maryland 1348226 1619 0.120%
Mississippi 726848 868 0.119%
Oregon 862856 838 0.097%
Missouri 1391476 1334 0.096%
Maine 256380 234 0.091%
Kentucky 1011667 905 0.089%
Wisconsin 1294626 1094 0.085%
Kansas 719557 605 0.084%
Alaska 186266 156 0.084%
Colorado 1257065 1009 0.080%
Texas 7211771 5720 0.079%
Iowa 728796 535 0.073%
Minnesota 1284387 931 0.072%
Pennsylvania 2690274 1941 0.072%
South Carolina 1091588 767 0.070%
North Carolina 2290568 1595 0.070%
Oklahoma 961321 619 0.064%
Florida 4105129 2506 0.061%
Louisiana 1114813 677 0.061%
Rhode Island 211044 128 0.061%
Delaware 204386 108 0.053%
West Virginia 379596 197 0.052%
Nebraska 470337 241 0.051%
Connecticut 764059 391 0.051%
Massachusetts 1387087 706 0.051%
Wyoming 138895 69 0.050%
Michigan 2207304 1083 0.049%
New York 4210817 1990 0.047%
New Mexico 496908 231 0.046%
New Jersey 1998821 848 0.042%
Nevada 669164 277 0.041%
California 9120916 3623 0.040%
North Dakota 173926 65 0.037%
Georgia 2504172 927 0.037%
Virginia 1870422 653 0.035%
District of Columbia 118107 40 0.034%
Washington 1611842 538 0.033%
Montana 226420 71 0.031%
New Hampshire 263998 80 0.030%
Arizona 1622850 347 0.021%
Hawaii 310833 66 0.021%
Puerto Rico 903295 154 0.017% (population data is 2016 estimation, all others being 2015 actual)
Idaho 432837 63 0.015%
South Dakota 211324 29 0.014%

National 74,548,406 57,286 0.077%

Conclusions

Turning this data into a piece of investigation, it implicates that in Vermont every 250th child is a reported victim while is South Dakota only every 7290th child is a reported victim. Considering there can't be such a huge difference in the amount of pedophiles between States, this clearly indicates false (too few) reported cases in the States in the bottom of the list. Hawaii and Puerto Rico are pretty obvious to be false, but for example Washington is surprisingly bad, and some citizen activity and journalistic efforts to make people aware of this are clearly needed.

The data also indicates that in the States in the bottom of the list the sexual child abuse is a more organized crime (same children being used by several pedophiles), assuming that there's somewhat equal amount of pedophiles all over. Having States like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, California, Georgia and Washington, known of having more organized crime in general, in the bottom of the list supports this conclusion.

For me, it seems that the States in the top of the list are actually safer for the kids, authorities doing their reporting better. This, however, can't be confirmed only by this data, as we don't know how reliable the reporting is in these States either.

Note: I will add the source to the minor population data and to a University study claiming that 13% later. I'm away for the weekend and can't access my bookmarks, so I'll probably add these on Monday (wasn't easy to link even that first pdf being on mobile, but I needed to have at least one source already to follow the rules). I hope you can tolerate with this for a couple of days.