Abstract
It is a source of great concern that the number of sexual offences committed by children is apparently on the increase. Given that the Child Justice Bill provides for a separate criminal justice process for children, and stricter provisions for child sex offenders, this article explores some of the relevant trends in this regard. The management of child sex offenders appears inconsistent, and very often no appropriate intervention is made at all. Calculating the actual incidence of child sex offenders is difficult, but some data suggests that children might be responsible for a significant proportion of sexual crimes committed against other children.
Highlights
In the last issue of the SA Crime Quarterly, Joan van Niekerk highlights the increased incidence of reported child sex abuse and the declining age of the average sexually abused child
Given the concerns raised by statistics such as these, the Children’s Rights Project of the Community Law Centre at the University of the Western Cape commissioned a research project to further understand the trends with regards to arrest, custody and reporting in respect of child sex offenders
Important to note is that rape, indecent assault involving grievous bodily harm, and indecent assault of a person younger than 16 years – all crime types considered in this research – fall under Schedule 3 of the Child Justice Bill
Summary
As we shall see below, the data does not suggest that this is the case: in the Western Cape the proportion of children arrested for sexual offences who are subsequently diverted, remained at 5% or less between 1998 and 2001 Another point to note is that the peaks in numbers of unsentenced children around December/January and April/May each year correspond with Christmas and Easter holidays. The office of the Provincial Commissioner of the South African Police Service (SAPS) in the Western Cape provided figures on persons 17 years and younger arrested for sexual offences during the period 1 January 1998 to 31 December 2001. There was a drop in 2001 from the high in 2000, the overall trend is toward an increase in these arrests in the province, by about 29 arrests per year
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