Juvenile Sex Offenders and the Law

[Freudian_Slit]

This NY Times Magazine article (registration may be necessary) raises the issue of juvenile sex offenders. Treating them the same as adult sex offenders has some disturbing implications. Though a lot of these kids (mostly males, but one female is mentioned in the article) have done some seriously bad things, treating them as adults may worsen things. Publishing their names/addresses on the Internet, for example, is par for the course with adult sex offenders per Megan’s Law, but what about in the cases of younger sex offenders?

In dozens of interviews, therapists, lawyers, teenagers and their parents told me similar stories of juveniles who, after being discovered on a sex-offender registry, have been ostracized by their peers and neighbors, kicked out of extracurricular activities or physically threatened by classmates. Experts worry that these experiences stigmatize adolescents and undermine the goals of rehabilitation. “The whole world knows you did this bad thing,” notes Elizabeth Letourneau, an associate psychology professor at the Medical University of South Carolina and an expert on juveniles with sex offenses. “You could go to treatment for five years; you could be as straight as an arrow; but the message continues to be: You are a bad person. How does that affect your self-image? How does that affect your ability to improve your behaviors?”

In the case of one fourteen year old girl who fondled a seven year old (when she was eleven), her identification on the Internet registry led to:

anonymous phone calls from guys wanting to “hook up” with her, while neighbors asked her family to move away. And her father was worried that his daughter’s Internet listing made her easy prey for adult men looking for adolescents who they assume are sexually experienced. But the girl is fortunate in one respect. She lives in a state that recently gave judges discretion about placing juveniles on public registries. Several months ago, her lawyer won a motion to have her information removed.

Bad things have happened to these kids who were identified. But wouldn’t most parents want to know if their children are going to school with a child who’s committed that sort of crime? There’s obviously got to be a better way of sorting out the kids who are dangerous to their peers with the ones who just made stupid mistakes.

Mark Chaffin of the University of Oklahoma suggests that children who offend are qualitatively different than adult sex offenders. Considering what a dangerous crime child molestation is, how we view children who may or may not grow up to become dangerous important. That is, are young kids committing sex crimes broadcasting huge warning signs of danger to come? Or are they just exercising poorer impulse control, something that has a much better chance of being corrected as they develop?

The last part of the brain to develop is the frontal lobe, which is responsible for impulse control, moral reasoning and regulating emotions — the things that adolescents lack when they decide, if they make a conscious decision, to molest a younger kid. So, instead of being compulsive like pedophiles, adolescents tend to be impulsive, which means tactics like “grooming,” in which an offender woos a child for weeks or months before a sexual assault, tend not to apply to the majority of juveniles, Chaffin notes. It’s not that juveniles can’t distinguish right from wrong; it’s that they don’t perceive risks and consequences the way adults do — as parents of teenagers know all too well. “I’ve been arguing for a classification called ‘puberty in the first degree,’ ” said Timothy Kahn, a Seattle therapist who has treated and evaluated thousands of juveniles with sex offenses, “which gives them a break for what they do when they are 12, 13, 14.”

Some of the cases, such as this one:

One mother I spoke to regretted not keeping quiet. When she discovered that her 11-year-old son had engaged in a sexual act with his younger sister (the mother wouldn’t specify the offense except to say that it did not involve penetration and no force was involved), she called a therapist. “I thought it was the right thing to do,” she told me. “I figured counseling would help.” She thought she knew how the law worked and that her son’s behavior might be reported to law enforcement. “But I thought: O.K., it will teach him a lesson. He’ll get a little probation, but his record will be sealed.” She didn’t realize that one year earlier her state had made children as young as 10 eligible for the state’s Internet sex-offender registry. Police entered her son’s DNA into a database. They took his fingerprints and mug shots. And they placed him on the state’s Web site. That’s where his photo and address have been for the past four years. “I feel it was my fault,” the mother told me. “I did it.”

the action is ambiguous. No penetration or force was involved–is this a case of abuse or a case of childhood experimentation between siblings? Obviously, no way of knowing from the article. But with children who have no real idea of sex and its implications, how do we decide what’s dangerous? and does the law always need to be brought in? (Apparently not in this case.)

Basically, my questions are: if juvenile sex offenders should be treated differently than adults, then how? How do we draw the line between giving them the chance to have a somewhat normal childhood/adolescence and keeping kids around them safe? And how do we decide what’s in the range of experimentation/playing doctor with someone who happens to be younger and a sex offender/abuser?

[Uncommon_Sense]

I dunno, but innocent sexual exploration among young kids is pretty common, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

Intent must be taken into account. Kids 12 and under for the most part are innocent and by simply questioning them any social worker or prosecutor can determine what the intent of the persons involved in a particular incident were. Also, there would be the possiblility of recording a history of certain aggressive youths and using that to assist with a decision.
We cannot have a blanket law that involves sexual awareness/experimentation with younger people.
Most of us did something similar to this when we were younger. There’d be a lot of Dopers on such a list, I’d bet.

[Freudian_Slit]

That makes sense. Plus, considering that when a younger child experiments with an (even younger) sibling/friend, it’s often because that’s who they’re around. An adult who goes out of their way to seek out children for sex–that’s a whole different kettle of fish.

The danger seems to be when is it just “playing doctor” versus when is it a sign that a child has been abused/is going to abuse others?