US courts have seen the number of sex offense cases involving juvenile offenders rise dramatically in recent years, a review of national statistics found, and treatment professionals say the offenders are getting younger and the crimes more violent.
Some psychologists blame the increase -- 40 percent over two decades -- on a society saturated with sex and violence and the fact that many of the accused were themselves victims of adult sexual predators.
Others say there are not more children committing such crimes, there is simply more awareness, better reporting and a general hysteria about sex offenders.
"I don't think it's appropriate to suggest we have whole schools full of sexual predators ... but we're seeing more of it and more sexually aggressive acts," said Scott Poland, past president of the National Association of School Psychologists.
Robert Prentky, a psychologist and nationally renowned expert on sex offenders, thinks the statistics are misleading.
"There aren't more kids, there are more laws," he said. "We now have fairly draconian laws with very harsh sanctions that apply to juveniles."
The number of children under 18 accused of forcible rape, violent and nonviolent sex offenses has steadily risen, from 24,100 children in 1985 to 33,800 in 2004, the analysis found.
By comparison, between 1993 and 2004, rape and sexual assaults by adults decreased more than 56 percent. (Identical statistics were unavailable before 1993).
Sharon Araji, a psychologist who took one of the first broad looks at the problem in her book Sexually Aggressive Children thinks the number of child-on-child sex crimes is actually even higher than the statistics indicate.
Only 28 percent of all violent sexual assaults are reported to police, according to a 1999 National Crime Victimization Survey. And cases of incest between siblings are widely thought to be underreported and may drive the numbers even higher, Araji said.
The rise in juvenile sex offenders has spawned hundreds of new treatment facilities, some for children as young as 5.
But Franklin Zimring, a juvenile justice expert at the University of California, Berkeley, thinks many children are unnecessarily treated as sex offenders. True pedophiles are extremely rare among young people, he said.
Many experts agree that some amount of sexual exploration by young people is healthy, but incidents cross the line when force and violence are involved, they said.
Experts said certain trends emerge among the children charged with sex crimes against other children.
Many (estimates range from 40 percent to 80 percent) were molested themselves.
And 42 percent have been exposed to hardcore pornography, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, said in a 2001 report.
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