Sex offenses against minors don't always feature deviant adults preying on children; kids themselves can also be the perpetrators.
Young adolescents account for roughly half of all cases of sex offenses against younger children; one out of every eight of young offenders are under the age of 12. But it wasn't until the latter half of the 20th century that researchers began paying attention to juvenile sex offenders, when research revealed that up to one-third of adult offenders began committing sex crimes in their youth. Then, policymakers and doctors alike saw juvenile sex offenders as pedophiles in miniature. Sarah Stillman reports this week in the New Yorker that juvenile sex offenders are still funneled into a system that was designed to manage adults offenders. There is little evidence that neither the treatment programs offered to childhood offenders nor life on the public sex offender registry—a log that was spearheaded by the parents of victims, and, according to Stillman, has spiraled out of control into something that its creators and champions never envisioned—actually result in any community benefit like increased public safety.
[For more of this story, written by Kate Wheeling, go to http://www.psmag.com/politics-...-young-sex-offenders]
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