o 20 percent of children and teens experience sexual abuse.
o 10 percent of children and adolescents have molested other children.
o 35 to 40 percent of sex crimes against children are committed by juveniles.
o 55 to 85 percent of child porn offenders have previously abused children.
o 40 percent of “acquaintance rapes” are committed by juveniles.
o Only 5 percent of cases have physical evidence.
o About 20 to 30 percent of sex offenders are psychopathic.
What is child sexual abuse?
o Sexual contact between an adult and a minor.
o Sexual contact among children.
o Exposing children to porn or using them in porn.
o Having sex in front of children.
SOURCES: Clark County Sheriff’s Office Offender Search, http://icrimewatch.net/washington.php.
“Tell me what you think about sex offenders,” Cory Jewell Jensen said to the crowd Tuesday night at the YWCA on Main Street. The full room, made up mostly of women, was completely silent for several moments before an audience member calmly answered: “Scum.”
Jensen, a nationally known speaker and co-director at the Center for Behavioral Intervention in Beaverton, Ore., led a workshop on protecting children from sexual abuse — and from becoming abusers themselves. The sex offender population is expected to increase, she said, because people are being exposed to porn and adult sexual behavior at an earlier age, giving them distorted attitudes about sex.
“It’s generally a problem that starts in childhood,” Jensen said.
Sex offenders may have been over-sexualized or sexually abused early on; had arousing contact with other children, lacked healthy sex education and guidance as youth, or adults in their lives didn’t identify inappropriate sexual behavior during childhood and intervene.