Jeff Slowikowski, Acting Administrator December 2009

Office of Justice Programs Innovation	•	Partnerships	•	Safer	Neighborhoods	 www.ojp.usdoj.gov

U.S. Department of Justice 

Office of Justice Programs 

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention 

in youth who commit sexual offenses 

has grown in recent years, along with 

specialized treatment and management 

programs, but relatively little populationbased epidemiological information about 

the characteristics of this group of offenders1 and their offenses has been available. 

The National Incident-Based Reporting 

System (NIBRS) offers perspective on the 

characteristics of the juvenile sex offender 

population coming to the attention of law 

enforcement.

Key findings from this Bulletin include the 

following:

◆ Juveniles account for more than onethird (35.6 percent) of those known to 

Juveniles Who 

Commit Sex Offenses

Against Minors 

David Finkelhor, Richard Ormrod, and Mark Chaffin 

Although those who commit sex offenses 

against minors are often described as 

“pedophiles” or “predators” and thought 

of as adults, it is important to understand 

that a substantial portion of these offenses 

are committed by other minors who do 

not fit the image of such terms. Interest 

Access OJJDP publications online at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ojjdp

1 This Bulletin follows the common convention of referring to these youth as “offenders.” However, very few 

of the youth described with this label in the National 

Incident-Based Reporting System data are convicted 

as adults would be. Many were only alleged to have 

engaged in illegal behavior, and, if subject to justice 

system action, were adjudicated delinquent rather 

than convicted of a crime. Thus, the term “juvenile offender” should not imply shared status with convicted 

adult offenders, legally or otherwise.

A Message From OJJDP

The victimization of youth by adult 

sex offenders has been an ongoing concern for some time. Although 

all crimes constitute an assault on 

civilization, the criminal violation of 

children is particularly disturbing. 

In recent years, there has been 

increased public interest in the 

incidence of sexual victimization of 

youth by other youth. This should not 

be surprising considering that youth 

constitute more than one in four sex 

offenders and that juveniles perpetrate 

more than one in three sex offenses 

against other youth. 

Research on juvenile sex offenders 

goes back more than half a century; 

however, little information about these 

young offenders and their offenses 

exists. 

This Bulletin draws on data from the 

Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 

National Incident-Based Reporting 

System to provide population-based 

epidemiological information on juvenile sex offending.

It is OJJDP’s hope that the findings 

reported in this Bulletin and their 

implications will help inform the policy 

and practice of those committed to 

addressing the sexual victimization of 

youth and strengthening its prevention and deterrence—considerations 

that are critical to success. Their 

efforts to protect youth from victimization, or from becoming victimizers 

themselves, have our support and 

commendation.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is committed to 

improving the justice system’s response to crimes against children. OJJDP recognizes 

that children are at increased risk for crime victimization. Not only are children the victims of many of the same crimes that victimize adults, they are subject to other crimes, 

like child abuse and neglect, that are specific to childhood. The impact of these crimes 

on young victims can be devastating, and the violent or sexual victimization of children can often lead to an intergenerational cycle of violence and abuse. The purpose 

of OJJDP’s Crimes Against Children Series is to improve and expand the Nation’s efforts 

to better serve child victims by presenting the latest information about child victimization, 

including analyses of crime victimization statistics, studies of child victims and their special needs, and descriptions of programs and approaches that address these needs. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

police to have committed sex offenses 

against minors. 

◆	 Juveniles who commit sex offenses 

against other children are more likely 

than adult sex offenders to offend in 

groups and at schools and to have 

more male victims and younger victims. 

◆	 The number of youth coming to the 

attention of police for sex offenses increases sharply at age 12 and plateaus 

after age 14. Early adolescence is the 

peak age for offenses against younger 

children. Offenses against teenagers 

surge during mid to late adolescence, 

while offenses against victims under 

age 12 decline. 

◆	 A small number of juvenile offenders— 

1 out of 8—are younger than age 12. 

◆	 Females constitute 7 percent of juveniles who commit sex offenses. 

◆	 Females are found more frequently 

among younger youth than older youth 

who commit sex offenses. This group’s 

offenses involve more multiple-victim 

and multiple-perpetrator episodes, and 

they are more likely to have victims who 

are family members or males. 

◆	 Jurisdictions vary enormously in their 

concentration of reported juvenile sex 

offenders, far more so than they vary 

in their concentration of adult sex 

offenders. 

Background 

Research on juvenile sex offenders goes 

back more than 50 years, but most of what 

is known comes from a surge of interest 

in the subject that began in the mid-1980s 

(Chaffin, Letourneau, and Silovsky, 2002), 

culled primarily from populations of youth 

in sex offender treatment programs. Juvenile sex offender treatment programs saw 

a 40-fold increase between 1982 and 1992 

(Knopp, Freeman-Longo, and Stevenson, 

1992). Accordingly, the number of published research articles on juvenile 

sex offenders increased from a handful 

prior to the mid-1980s to more than 200 

studies currently. Dissemination of information about these offenders has included 

federally funded efforts from sources such 

as the Center for Sex Offender Management and the National Center on the 

Sexual Behavior of Youth. Professional 

societies such as the Association for the 

Treatment of Sexual Abusers have also 

published policy and practice guidelines. 

Most of the clinical sample studies on 

which current knowledge is based have 

focused on the clinical characteristics of 

offenders, treatment issues, risk predictors, 

and recidivism rates (Becker, 1998). The 

clinical literature has generally considered 

teenage and preteen offenders as different offender types: teenage sex offenders 

are predominately male (more than 90 

percent), whereas a significant number 

of preteen offenders are female (Silovsky 

and Niec, 2002). Most offenses described 

in the clinical literature involve teenage 

offenders acting alone with young children 

as victims. Many specialized intervention 

systems are designed with this type of 

behavior in mind. 

Early thinking about juvenile sex offenders 

was based on what was known about adult 

child molesters, particularly adult pedophiles, given findings that a significant 

portion of them began their offending during adolescence. However, current clinical 

typologies and models emphasize that 

this retrospective logic has obscured 

The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) 

The U.S. Department of Justice is replacing its long-established Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) system with a more comprehensive National Incident-Based Reporting 

System (NIBRS). Whereas UCR monitors only a limited number of index crimes and 

gathers few details on each crime event (except in the case of homicide), NIBRS 

collects a wide range of information on victims, offenders, and circumstances for 

a greater variety of offenses. Offenses tracked in NIBRS include violent crimes 

(e.g., homicide, assault, rape, robbery), property crimes (e.g., theft, arson, vandalism, fraud, and embezzlement), and crimes against society (e.g., drug offenses, 

gambling, prostitution). Moreover, NIBRS collects information on multiple victims, 

multiple offenders, and multiple crimes that may be part of the same episode. 

Under the new system, as under the old, local law enforcement personnel compile 

information on crimes coming to their attention and the information is then aggregated at State and national levels. For a crime to count in the system, law enforcement simply needs to report and investigate the crime. The incident does not need 

to be cleared, nor must an arrest be made, though unfounded reports are deleted. 

NIBRS holds great promise, but it is still far from a national system. The Federal 

Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began implementing the system in 1988, and State 

and local agency participation is voluntary and incremental. By 1995, jurisdictions 

in 9 States had agencies contributing data; by 1997, the number was 12; and 

by 2004, jurisdictions in 29 States submitted reports, providing coverage for 20 

percent of the Nation’s population and 16 percent of its crime. At the beginning of 

2004, only 7 States (Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, 

and West Virginia) had participation from all local jurisdictions, and only 5 cities 

with a population greater than 500,000 (Columbus, OH; El Paso, TX; Memphis, 

TN; Nashville, TN; and Milwaukee, WI) were reporting. The crime experiences of 

large urban areas are thus particularly underrepresented. The system, therefore, 

is not yet nationally representative, nor do its data represent national trends or 

national statistics. Nevertheless, the system is assembling large amounts of crime 

information and providing rich detail about juvenile offending and victimization that 

was previously unavailable. The patterns and associations these data reveal are 

real and represent the experiences of a large number of youth. For 2004, the 29 

participating States* reported more than 4,037,000 crime incidents, with at least 

14,000 involving an identified juvenile sex offender. As more jurisdictions join the 

system, new patterns may emerge. 

More information about NIBRS data collection can be found at these Web sites: 

(1) www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm#cius 

(2) www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/nibrs.htm 

(3) www.jrsa.org/ibrrc 

* In 2004, participating States included Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, 

Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, 

North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, 

Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. 

2 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

important motivational, behavioral, and 

prognostic differences between juvenile 

sex offenders and adult sex offenders and 

has overestimated the role of deviant sexual preferences in juvenile sex crimes. More 

recent models emphasize the diversity 

of juvenile sex offenders, their favorable 

prognosis suggested by low sex-offenserecidivism rates, and the commonalities 

between juvenile sex offending and other 

juvenile delinquency (Letourneau and 

Miner, 2005). 

Clinical studies also underscore a diversity of behaviors, characteristics, and future 

risk. For example, the sexual behaviors 

that bring youth into clinical settings can 

include events as diverse as sharing pornography with younger children, fondling 

a child over the clothes, grabbing peers 

in a sexual way at school, date rape, gang 

rape, or performing oral, vaginal, or anal 

sex on a much younger child. Offenses 

can involve a single event, a few isolated 

events, or a large number of events with 

multiple victims. Juvenile sex offenders 

come from a variety of social and family 

backgrounds and can either be well functioning or have multiple problems. A number have experienced a high accumulated 

burden of adversity, including maltreatment or exposure to violence; others have 

not. In some cases, a history of childhood 

sexual abuse appears to contribute to 

later juvenile sex offending (Lambie et al., 

2002), but most sexual abuse victims do 

not become sex offenders in adolescence 

or adulthood (Widom and Ames, 1994). 

Among preteen children with sexual behavior problems, a history of sexual abuse 

is particularly prevalent. 

In addition to a diversity of backgrounds, 

diversity in motivation is evident. Some 

juvenile sex offenders appear primarily 

motivated by sexual curiosity. Others 

have longstanding patterns of violating 

the rights of others. Some offenses occur 

in conjunction with serious mental health 

problems. Some of the offending behavior 

is compulsive, but it more often appears 

impulsive or reflects poor judgment 

(Becker, 1998; Center for Sex Offender 

Management, 1999; Chaffin, 2005; Hunter 

et al., 2003). 

Similarly, clinical data point to variability 

in risk for future sex offending as an adult. 

Multiple short- and long-term clinical followup studies of juvenile sex offenders consistently demonstrate that a large majority 

(about 85–95 percent) of sex-offending 

youth have no arrests or reports for future 

sex crimes. When previously sex-offending 

Using NIBRS Data To Investigate Juvenile Sex Offenders 

The information presented in this Bulletin about juvenile sex offenders is based on 

data collected by the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) for 2004 

(see discussion of the National Incident-Based Reporting System on page 2). At 

present, NIBRS is the only available source of geographically diverse and uniformly collected crime data that provides detailed descriptions of juvenile sex offenders, their victims, and the crime incidents they initiate. The offenders and incidents 

recorded by NIBRS represent only those that come to the attention of police. 

The basic unit of data organization in NIBRS is the crime incident. An incident is 

defined as “one or more offenses committed by the same offender, or group of offenders acting in concert, at the same time and place” (U.S. Department of Justice, 

Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2004:191). Thus, a single sex offense incident can 

be characterized by additional offenses beyond a sex offense or even multiple sex 

offenses, by multiple offenders, and by multiple victims. Most sex offense incidents, 

however, are not so complex. 

For this Bulletin, the basic unit of measure is the individual sex offender, although 

NIBRS links each offender to broader incident characteristics, such as the number 

of offenders present, victim age and identity, incident location, and time of day. 

Although juveniles sometimes commit sex crimes against adults, the majority (96.2 

percent) of those known to police target other juveniles. These offenders, juveniles 

who commit sex offenses against minors, are of particular interest to this analysis. 

Unless stated otherwise in this Bulletin, “sex offender” (both juvenile and adult) 

refers to those committing sex offenses against minors. 

For purposes of analysis, juvenile victims are defined as persons younger than 18; 

juvenile offenders are defined as persons of ages 6 through 17. (Although NIBRS 

records include a small number of children younger than 6 years of age, the notion 

of very young children committing sex crimes is problematic, so these children 

were excluded from this analysis.) An adult is defined as a person 18 years of 

age or older. It is also important to note that the offender ages recorded in NIBRS 

reflect the ages of the youth at the time the incidents are reported, not the ages at 

the time the incidents occurred, which are different in 19 percent of cases. 

This Bulletin makes some comparisons between an individual offender and an 

individual victim (e.g., age difference, gender similarity or difference). 

[continued on page 4] 

youth do have future arrests, they are far 

more likely to be for nonsexual crimes such 

as property or drug offenses than for sex 

crimes (Alexander, 1999; Caldwell, 2002; 

Reitzel and Carbonell, 2007). These empirical findings contrast with popular thought 

and widely publicized anecdotal cases that 

disproportionately portray incidences of 

sex crime recidivism. Nevertheless, a small 

number of sex-offending youth are at elevated risk to progress to adult sex offenses. 

To identify those who are more likely to 

progress to future offending, researchers 

have developed actuarial risk assessment 

tools that have demonstrated some predictive validity; efforts to refine these tools are 

underway (Parks and Bard, 2006; Righthand et al., 2005; Worling, 2004). 

Unfortunately, research on juvenile sex 

offenders beyond clinical populations 

has been more limited. Few studies have 

surveyed representative youth populations to ascertain population-based rates 

of juvenile offending (e.g., Elliott, Huizinga, 

and Menard, 1989). Juvenile sex offenses 

reported to authorities yield official crime 

report data, but these data typically contain limited information about the nature 

of the incidents involved. As more detailed 

crime report data become available, 

and as researchers study these data in 

conjunction with clinical sample data, the 

information gained will assist prevention 

and intervention planning substantially. 

Juvenile and Adult 

Sex Offenders Known 

to Police 

Juvenile sex offenders comprise more 

than one-quarter (25.8 percent) of all sex 

offenders and more than one-third (35.6 

percent) of sex offenders against juvenile 

victims (the group that is the focus of this 

Bulletin). As a percentage of all juvenile 

offenders, they do not constitute a large 

3 
 

 

Using NIBRS Data To Investigate Juvenile Sex Offenders 

(continued) 

For offenders in incidents with multiple victims (12.8 percent of juvenile offenders), 

this Bulletin uses the youngest victim for these comparisons. 

NIBRS data identify a number of specific sex offenses and classify them as either 

forcible (rape, sodomy, sexual assault with an object, fondling) or nonforcible (incest, statutory rape) sex offenses. It defines a forcible sex offense as “any sexual 

act directed against another person, forcibly and/or against that person’s will; or 

not forcibly or against the person’s will where the victim is incapable of giving 

consent” (U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2004:191). 

A person may be incapable of giving consent because of temporary or permanent 

mental or physical incapacity or because of youth. Furthermore, NIBRS guidelines 

direct that “the ability of the victim to give consent must be a professional determination by the law enforcement agency” (U.S. Department of Justice, Federal 

Bureau of Investigation, 2004:191). A nonforcible sex offense is defined as “unlawful, nonforcible sexual intercourse” (U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of 

Investigation, 2004:192). 

Although NIBRS attempts to standardize crime definitions, individual police officers 

and jurisdictions may categorize similar episodes in very different ways for NIBRS 

purposes, so the distinctions among various sex offense categories may be less 

clear than the names might imply. Although statutes do describe illegal sexual 

behavior that could easily be classified as nonforcible (e.g., showing pornography 

or making sexual suggestions to a child) and other behaviors that are clearly forcible (e.g., rape), how law enforcement might categorize less straightforward cases 

(e.g., physically noncoercive fondling between youth of widely disparate ages) may 

be less reliable. For this Bulletin, “sex offender” refers to a person who has committed either a forcible or nonforcible sex offense, although the majority of juvenile sex 

offenders (90.5 percent) reported in NIBRS committed a forcible sex offense. 

0 

2 

4 

6 

8 

10 

12 

14 

16 

18 

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 

Offender Age 

Percentage of All Offenders 

Offenders of Victims ≥12 Years Old Offenders of Victims <12 Years Old 

Figure 1: Age Distribution of Juvenile Sex Offenders, by Victim Age 

Note: N = 13,471 juvenile offenders. 

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based 

Reporting System, 2004. 

group—juvenile sex offenders account for 

only 3.1 percent of all juvenile offenders 

and 7.4 percent of all violent juvenile 

offenders. If other jurisdictions in the 

country were assumed to be the same 

as the NIBRS jurisdictions, one would 

extrapolate approximately 89,000 juvenile 

sex offenders known to police throughout 

the United States in 2004. 

Known juvenile offenders who commit 

sex offenses against minors span a variety 

of ages. Five percent are younger than 9 

years, and 16 percent are younger than 

12 years (figure 1). The rate rises sharply 

around age 12 and plateaus after age 14. 

As a proportion of the total, 38 percent are 

between ages 12 and 14, and 46 percent 

are between ages 15 and 17. The vast majority (93 percent) are male. 

Juveniles who commit sex offenses against 

minors are different from adults who 

commit sex offenses against minors on a 

number of crucial dimensions captured 

by NIBRS (table 1, page 5). Juveniles are 

more likely to offend in groups (24 percent 

with one or more co-offenders versus 14 

percent for adults). They are somewhat 

more likely to offend against acquaintances (63 percent versus 55 percent). 

Their most serious offense is less likely 

to be rape (24 percent versus 31 percent) 

and more likely to be sodomy (13 percent 

versus 7 percent) or fondling (49 percent 

versus 42 percent). They are more likely 

to have a male victim (25 percent versus 

13 percent). 

Sex offenses committed by juveniles very 

often occur in the home, although somewhat less often than their adult counterparts (69 percent versus 80 percent) but 

are more likely to occur in a school (12 

percent versus 2 percent). Their offenses 

occur somewhat more in the afternoon 

(43 percent versus 37 percent for adults) 

than in the evening (25 percent versus 

28 percent) or at night (5 percent versus 

9 percent). 

Juvenile sex offenders are also much more 

likely than adult sex offenders to target 

young children as their victims. The proportion of victims younger than the age of 

12 is 59 percent for juvenile sex offenders, 

compared with 39 percent for adult sex offenders. Figure 2 (page 6) shows how adult 

sex offenders concentrate their offenses 

against victims age 13 and older. In contrast, the age range of victims of juvenile 

sex offenders is more dispersed, and 16-

4 
 

 

 

and 17-year-old victims actually represent 

a surprisingly small proportion. Juvenile 

sex offenders are less likely to target other 

juveniles who are older than they are. 

Figure 2 also shows that children younger 

than age 12 have about an equal likelihood 

of being victimized by juvenile and adult 

sex offenders, but adult offenders predominate among those who victimize teens. 

Juvenile sex offenders more commonly 

target other juveniles who are somewhat 

younger than they are, signaling a clear 

relationship between the age of juvenile 

sex offenders and the age of their victims 

(figure 3, page 6). When juvenile sex offenders are themselves 6 to 9 years old, 

the mean age of their victims is between 5 

and 7. When juvenile sex offenders are age 

15 to 17, the mean age of their victims is 

between 11 and 13. However, when victims 

are younger than age 12, there is a marked 

peak for offending by 13- to 14-year-olds, 

and then a dramatic decline in the targeting of these young victims by youth age 

15 and older (figure 1). Youth age 15 and 

Table 1: Characteristics of Juveniles and Adults Who Commit 

Sex Offenses Against Minors 

Sex Offenders (%) 

Juvenile 

(N = 13,471) 

Adult 

Characteristic (N = 24,344) 

Multiple offenders in incident 23.9 13.5 

Two offenders 14.4 9.1 

Three or more offenders 9.5 4.4 

Victim identity (youngest victim) 

Family 25.0 31.9 

Acquaintance 63.2 54.8 

Stranger 2.5 4.4 

Victim was also offender 0.8 0.0 

Unknown 8.4 9.0 

Sex offense (most serious) 

Rape 24.0 30.6 

Sodomy 12.5 6.5 

Sex assault with object 4.7 4.4 

Fondling 49.4 42.1 

Nonforcible sex offense 9.5 16.3 

Female offender 7.3 5.4 

Victim gender 

Any female victim in incident 78.8 88.2 

Any male victim in incident 24.7 13.4 

Incident location 

Residence/home 68.8 79.6 

School/college 11.9 1.6 

Store/building 3.8 4.8 

Outside 7.1 6.7 

Other/unknown 8.3 7.3 

Incident time of day 

Morning (6 a.m. to 12 p.m.) 26.7 25.1 

Afternoon (12 p.m. to 6 p.m.) 43.0 37.3 

Evening (6 p.m. to 12 a.m.) 25.2 28.3 

Night (12 a.m. to 6 a.m.) 5.2 9.2 

Arrest in incident 30.5 34.1 

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based 

Reporting System, 2004. 

older primarily target postpubescent 

victims. 

This relationship between offender age 

and victim age also varies by victim 

gender, as shown in figures 4 (page 8) and 

5 (page 10). When the victims are boys, 

a majority are younger than age 12, and 

there is also a marked peak reflecting 

12- to 14-year-old sex offenders targeting 

4- to 7-year-old boys. When the victims 

are girls, by contrast, there is a greater 

link between the rise in age of the offender 

and the victim, and the peak is among 

15- to 17-year-olds targeting 13- to 15-yearold girls. This suggests that when teen 

offenders target boys, they tend to focus 

on much younger and sexually immature 

boys rather than their peers, whereas 

when older teen offenders target girls, 

they tend to focus more on sexually mature females. This finding may stem from 

the fact that juvenile offenders may find it 

easier to dominate girls and younger boys 

than to dominate older boys. However, it 

could also be that older male victims of 

teenage offenders are particularly reluctant to report their victimizations to police 

compared with teenage female victims. 

Younger Juvenile 

Sex Offenders 

Although most juvenile sex offenders are 

teenagers, about 16 percent of those who 

come to police attention are younger than 

age 12. This group has been of particular interest to clinicians, educators, and 

public safety officials, who have been 

reluctant to regard them in the same 

delinquency-oriented framework that has 

applied to older offenders. Professionals commonly use other terms, such as 

“children with sexual behavior problems,” 

to describe this group. What proportion 

of these children come to police attention 

is unclear because these cases may be 

handled exclusively within other systems, 

such as the child protection system or 

schools. However, the group of younger 

juvenile offenders who come to police 

attention does manifest certain characteristics that differentiate them from older 

offenders (table 2, page 7). 

Offenders younger than age 12 are somewhat more likely than offenders age 12 

or older to be female and to offend in 

multiple offender and multiple victim episodes. Younger offenders are also somewhat more likely than older offenders to 

5 
Figure 3: Juvenile Sex Victim Age, by Juvenile Offender Age 

100 17

90 15 

80 

s

13 2

ge 

70 

tim

n 1

m A

60 

Vic

11

of 

50

Younger Tha

ge

Mean 

9 

Victi

40

nta

7 

30

Perce

5 

20 

10 3 

0 1 

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 

Offender Age 

Female Victims Male Victims All Victims 

Note: N = 13,471 juvenile offenders. For offenders with multiple victims, age of youngest victim 

is shown. 

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based 

Reporting System, 2004. 

(left axis) 

(right axis) 

 

offend against family members and in a 20 percent) and younger victims closer to 

their own age. Their most serious offense 

is more likely to be fondling and less likely 

to be rape. Police are considerably less 

residential environment. Younger offenders are more likely than older offenders 

to target male victims (37 percent versus 

0 

2 

4 

6 

8 

10 

12 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 

Victim Age 

Percentage of All Victims 

Victims of Adult Offenders Victims of Juvenile Offenders 

Figure 2: Age Distribution of Juvenile Sex Victims, by Offender Age 

Note: N = 37,815 juvenile victims, 13,471 (36 percent) with juvenile offenders and 24,344 (64 percent) with adult offenders. For offenders with multiple victims, age of youngest victim is shown. 

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based 

Reporting System, 2004. 

likely to arrest younger offenders than 

older offenders in the wake of a report 

(17 percent versus 33 percent). 

Female Juvenile Sex 

Offenders 

Female juvenile sex offenders are another 

group who have attracted a particular 

interest among clinicians and law enforcement officials. They constitute only a small 

proportion (7 percent) of all juvenile sex 

offenders in the NIBRS database, but they 

have several features that distinguish 

them from male juvenile sex offenders 

(table 3, page 9). 

Female offenders are younger than their 

male counterparts. Of the female offenders, 31 percent were younger than 12, 

compared with only 14 percent of male 

offenders. Female offenders were considerably more likely than male offenders to 

offend in conjunction with others (36 percent versus 23 percent) and in conjunction 

with adults (13 percent versus 5 percent). 

They were also more likely to be involved 

in incidents with multiple victims than 

were male offenders (23 percent versus 

12 percent) and to be considered by investigators to be victims at the same time 

they were offending. 

Female offenders are somewhat more 

likely to offend in a residence or home 

and less likely to offend at a school. They 

were more likely than male offenders to 

have male victims (37 percent versus 21 

percent) and victims younger than age 11 

(60 percent versus 43 percent). 

Reporting Juvenile Sex 

Offenses 

Concern about juvenile sex offenders is 

a relatively recent phenomenon. Some 

communities have mobilized quite energetically in recent years to identify and 

intervene with such youth, conducting 

extensive training among law enforcement, child protection staff, and educators 

and establishing specialized treatment 

programs. In other communities, however, 

concern about the problem has been slow 

to develop. Thus, the spectrum of community activity surrounding juvenile sex 

offenders ranges from very slight in some 

jurisdictions to exaggerated or disproportionate in other jurisdictions. 

This variability in community response is 

reflected in the data from NIBRS jurisdictions, which differ considerably in the 

6 
 

 

 

 

concentration of juvenile sex offenders in 

their caseloads. Some jurisdictions may 

have unusually high concentrations of 

juvenile sex offenders. In NIBRS jurisdictions with populations greater than 5,000 

(classified as “city” type jurisdictions) and 

that have at least 10 juvenile violent offenders, juvenile sex offenders constitute 

6 percent of the total number of juvenile 

violent offenders overall. However, a 

considerable number of jurisdictions 

have particularly high concentrations of 

Table 2: Characteristics of Juvenile Sex Offenders Who Victimize Minors, 

by Age of Offender 

Juvenile Sex Offenders (%) 

Younger (age < 12 years) 

(N = 2,104) 

Older (age ≥ 12 years) 

Characteristic (N = 11,367) 

Multiple offenders in incident 29.0 23.0 

Adult offender in incident 2.6 5.7 

Female offender 14.6 5.9 

Multiple victims in incident 16.0 12.1 

Victim identity (youngest victim) 

Family 31.6 23.8 

Acquaintance 56.0 64.5 

Stranger 1.6 2.7 

Victim is also offender 1.0 0.8 

Unknown 9.7 8.2 

Incident location 

Residence/home 73.0 68.1 

School/college 10.8 12.1 

Store/building 2.9 4.0 

Outside 5.0 7.4 

Other/unknown 8.2 8.3 

Victim gender (youngest victim) 

Male 36.6 19.9 

Female 63.4 80.1 

Age of youngest victim (years) 

0–6 57.1 21.0 

7–10 31.2 15.5 

11–14 10.9 43.2 

15–17 0.8 20.2 

Sex offense (most serious) 

Rape 11.0 26.4 

Sodomy 15.4 11.9 

Sex assault with object 7.2 4.2 

Fondling 61.3 47.2 

Nonforcible sex offense 5.1 10.5 

Injury in incident 

None 88.8 86.9 

Minor 9.6 10.6 

Major 1.6 2.5 

Incident time of day 

Morning (6 a.m. to 12 p.m.) 28.9 26.3 

Afternoon (12 p.m. to 6 p.m.) 45.6 42.5 

Evening (6 p.m. to 12 a.m.) 22.7 25.7 

Night (12 a.m. to 6 a.m.) 2.8 5.6 

Arrest in incident 16.5 32.9 

juvenile sex offenders. For example, of the 

identified NIBRS jurisdictions, 8 percent 

have concentrations of juvenile sex offenders that are three times that of the median 

jurisdiction (i.e., more than 25 percent of 

the jurisdiction’s juvenile violent offenders 

are sex offenders). In contrast, just 4 percent of the identified NIBRS jurisdictions 

have concentrations of adult sex offenders that are triple the rate for the median 

jurisdiction. 

There is also evidence of a tendency in 

other jurisdictions for juvenile sex offenders to represent a disproportionately 

small proportion of all juvenile violent 

offenders. In 29 percent of the identified 

NIBRS jurisdictions, the concentration of 

juvenile sex offenders equals half the median concentration (a low proportion) for 

the group of NIBRS jurisdictions identified 

above. In contrast, only 19 percent of the 

identified NIBRS jurisdictions have a similarly low concentration of adult sex offenders. That is, in contrast to the situation 

with adult sex offender concentrations, 

more jurisdictions have either a very high 

concentration of juvenile sex offenders or 

a concentration that is particularly low, 

reflecting, perhaps, contrasting levels of 

interest in this offender group. Table 4 

(page 10) suggests that large jurisdictions 

are particularly likely to have low concentrations of juvenile sex offenders among 

their juvenile violent offender population. 

It is also possible that these jurisdictions 

have higher rates of violent nonsexual juvenile offending, which lowers the relative 

percentage of juvenile sex offenders. 

Implications 

These findings suggest a number of implications for policy and practice. First, the 

statistics clearly highlight the fact that 

juveniles continue to constitute a substantial proportion—more than one-third—of 

those who commit sexual offenses against 

minors. This proportion is comparable to 

that found in reports from other samples 

and from earlier periods (Davis and Leitenberg, 1987; Snyder and Sickmund, 1999). 

Thus, any effort to prevent or intervene 

in sexual assault and child molestation 

must address the risk that juvenile sex 

offenders pose. Prevention and deterrence 

messages should be directed to youthful 

audiences in schools, youth organizations, on the Internet, on youth-oriented 

media, and even in families. Victimization 

prevention messages delivered to potenSource: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based tial victims and their caregivers should be 


Reporting System, 2004. broadened to include information about 


7 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6 7 8 9 

2–2.5 

1.5–2 

0.5–1 

Offender Age 

Victim Age

1–1.5 

0–0.5 

10 11 12 13 14 1615 17

0 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

17 

16 

15 

14 

13 

12 

11 

10 

Percent of 

Offender-Victim 

Pairs 

Figure 4: Juvenile Sex Offenders Versus Male Juvenile Victims 

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based 

Reporting System, 2004. 

the risk of sexual abuse not only from 

adults but also from juveniles. 

In addition, perpetration prevention 

programs that have been targeted primarily toward at-risk adult populations need 

to begin earlier (Ryan, 1997), with youth 

younger than age 12, the age at which 

these findings suggest an escalation in 

offending occurs. Given the sharp increase 

in sex offense rates at this age, prevention messages delivered to boys prior to 

early adolescence may be essential to 

consider. The prevention messages for 

these preteens may need to focus on their 

risk for victimizing much younger children 

(ages 4–7). Families and institutions may 

need to stay vigilant about contexts that 

involve pairings of young teenage boys 

with much younger children. This is not to 

suggest that all young teenage boys pose a 

high risk for molesting children. Very few 

juveniles of any age commit sex offenses. 

Rather, it is simply that the risk of offending against children during this developmental period appears to be relatively 

higher than at other ages. Therefore, some 

increased vigilance may be appropriate. 

This might include taking additional care 

to check references when considering 

young teenage babysitters and exercising closer supervision or monitoring of 

interactions. 

Different preventive priorities seem important for older teenagers. Given the older 

age profile for victims of older teenagers, 

prevention messages may need to shift as 

youth enter middle adolescence. Prevention messages for these older teenagers 

may be better focused on the dynamics of 

date and teenager-on-teenager rape. The 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have developed a multilevel 

public health primary-perpetration prevention model that includes suggested 

prevention activities at the individual, relationship, community, and societal levels 

(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2004), including a focus on juvenile 

perpetration prevention. 

To ensure adequate intervention with the 

large proportion of juveniles among the 

sex offender population, police, prosecutors, and probation and parole officials 

need adequate training and resources to 

respond effectively and sensitively to 

juvenile sex offenders. They must conduct 

investigations and manage juvenile offenders in a way that best prevents reoffending. 

Fortunately, several intervention strategies have proven effective in reducing 

recidivism among teenage sex offenders, 

and communities should acquaint themselves with these approaches (Borduin 

and Schaeffer, 2001; Reitzel and Carbonell, 

2007; Letourneau et al., 2009). Good results 

have also been reported across a number 

of short-term interventions with juvenile 

offenders younger than age 12 (Chaffin et 

al., 2008). Researchers found that one brief 

treatment for preteens reduced the risk of 

future sex offenses to levels comparable 

with those of children who had no history 

of inappropriate sexual behavior (Carpentier, Silovsky, and Chaffin, 2006). 

Analysis of the study data also highlights 

certain features of juvenile sex offenders that policymakers should take into 

account. First, the findings emphasize 

the diversity among juveniles who commit sex offenses. This population clearly 

includes older and younger youth, males 

and females, those who offend against 

much younger children, those who offend 

against peers, those who offend alone, and 

those who offend in groups, among other 

diverse characteristics. This diversity indicates the need to avoid stereotypes about 

juvenile sex offenders and to develop prevention and response strategies that can 

accommodate many of these various types 

of youth and offenses. Similarly, public 

policies must reflect the diversity among 

juvenile sex offenders by adopting more 

nuanced and flexible procedures rather 

than broad mandates. 

The analyses reiterate many findings from 

the clinical sample literature, notably, that 

individuals known to the victim, including 

family members, are those who most often 

commit sexual assaults; that around 90 

percent of known teen offenders are male; 

and that preteens with sexual behavior 

problems include a higher percentage 

of girls. Given the natural reluctance 

to consider family members and other 

trusted persons among those who may 

pose a danger, these findings underscore 

the need for information about prevention 

to emphasize that risk can include family 

members or other well-known persons. 

The findings show that young boys are 

highly vulnerable to offenses by other 

8 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

juveniles. Parents, schools, or prevention 

programs that have focused on limiting 

or supervising contact between female 

children and older male juveniles or adults 

must revise their messages to include 

examples involving young male victims, 

and perhaps even female perpetrators. 

Because boys younger than 12 are particularly at risk, it is important to give them 

prevention information that addresses 

Table 3: Characteristics of Juvenile Sex Offenders Who Victimize Minors, 

by Gender of Offender 

Juvenile Sex Offenders (%) 

Female 

(N = 979) 

Male 

Characteristic (N = 12,450) 

Offender age (years) 

6–8 10.6 4.4 

9–11 20.6 10.0 

12–14 38.3 37.9 

15–17 30.4 47.7 

Multiple offenders in incident 36.1 22.9 

Adult offender in incident 12.6 4.6 

Multiple victims in incident 22.9 12.0 

Victim identity (youngest victim) 

Family 26.4 24.9 

Acquaintance 57.0 63.8 

Stranger 0.6 2.6 

Victim was also offender 6.3 0.4 

Unknown 9.7 8.3 

Incident location 

Residence/home 77.2 68.2 

School/college 6.5 12.4 

Store/building 4.8 3.8 

Outside 4.3 7.3 

Other/unknown 7.2 8.4 

Victim gender (youngest victim) 

Male 36.6 21.4 

Female 63.4 78.6 

Age of youngest victim (years) 

0–6 39.8 25.6 

7–10 20.2 17.8 

11–14 26.0 39.2 

15–17 13.9 17.4 

Type of sex offense 

Forcible 91.0 90.4 

Nonforcible 9.0 9.6 

Injury in incident 

None 87.6 87.0 

Minor 11.5 10.5 

Major 0.9 2.5 

Incident time of day 

Morning (6 a.m. to 12 p.m.) 27.4 26.6 

Afternoon (12 p.m. to 6 p.m.) 41.5 43.1 

Evening (6 p.m. to 12 a.m.) 27.0 25.1 

Night (12 a.m. to 6 a.m.) 4.0 5.2 

Arrest in incident 26.7 30.9 

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based 

Reporting System, 2004. 

the possibility of sexual misbehavior at 

the hands of older boys. Adults should be 

equally vigilant in protecting young boys 

as in protecting young girls. 

Another significant finding is that juvenile offenders are more likely than adult 

offenders to commit illegal sexual behavior in groups. This finding mirrors recent 

work in other countries that also has 

shown that juveniles commit more sex 

crimes in groups (Kjellgren et al., 2006). 

Although some of these group-involved 

juveniles may have offended on their own, 

the findings suggest that peer influences 

play as much of a role in juvenile sexual 

delinquency as they do in nonsexual 

delinquency, underscoring the need for 

prevention efforts to look beyond individual pathology and consider male adolescent 

peer cultures. It may be possible to devise 

interventions that would help inoculate 

some malleable, but less delinquency 

prone, youth to resist such peer influence. 

Such efforts could be extensions of some 

of the work in the field to promote more 

prosocial actions by “bystanders” with 

regard to date rape (Banyard, Moynihan, 

and Plante, 2007). 

Data from police reports also show that, 

overall, older offenders tend to choose 

older victims. Juveniles who commit 

sexual offenses tend to do so against their 

age mates or somewhat younger children. 

In fact, offenses against young children 

actually decline across offender age, as 

offenders move from early to middle 

adolescence. This contradicts an assumption behind some sex offender treatment 

that a fixed attraction to young children 

(i.e., pedophilia) is the sole or even predominant motivation for juvenile sex 

offenses. The relationships between victim 

and offender age found in this study may 

suggest developmental hypotheses for the 

clinical assessment of juveniles. To the 

extent that epidemiologically rarer events 

correspond to greater individual deviancy, 

cases of older teenagers victimizing much 

younger children might raise relatively 

more concern and pose higher future 

risk than cases where younger teenagers 

victimize young children. Because it is 

more common for younger teenagers than 

older teenagers to engage in illegal sexual 

behavior with younger children, this 

scenario may reflect comparatively lower 

levels of individual pathology. 

Juvenile sex offenders known to law 

enforcement appear to commit a greater 

number of group-involved cases and 

teenager-on-teenager cases than one might 

9 
10

6789 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

17 

16 

15 

14 

13 

12 

11 

10 

Victim Age

3.5–4

3–3.5 

2.5–3 

2–2.5 

1.5–2 

1–1.5 

0.5–1 

0–0.5 

Offender Age

Percent of

Offender-Victim 

Pairs

Figure 5: Juvenile Sex Offenders Versus Female Juvenile Victims

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based 

Reporting System, 2004.

justice programming addresses their 

needs may need further examination. Peer 

assaults and date rapes have sometimes 

received less attention than the sexual 

abuse of young children by teenagers. 

However, peer assaults and date rape may 

be easier to prevent because the power 

differential or developmental difference 

between offender and victim in these 

cases is less than that between a teenager 

and a much younger victim. Because 

juvenile sexual assaults are more likely 

than adult assaults to occur at school or 

during afterschool hours, efforts to 

prevent juvenile assaults might benefit 

from actions focused on these settings.

This analysis found considerable variation 

across jurisdictions and communities in 

the proportion of juvenile offenses that 

were sexual in nature. There are a number 

of possibilities, including real differences 

in prevalence rates, different rates of overall crime or crime reporting, or differential 

willingness to report or investigate juvenile sex offenses in particular, that might 

explain this finding. Observation suggests 

real variation in community approaches to 

juvenile sex offending. In some communities, officials handle juvenile sex offense 

cases more within the child protection 

system than within the criminal justice 

system. Exclusive handling of a case 

within the child welfare system may occur 

more often when a young child commits 

the offense or when the offense occurs 

within the family, possibly causing these 

types of cases to be underrepresented in 

NIBRS data. 

If the variation is indeed due to differences 

in community practice, it may merit additional study, particularly to test whether 

more aggressive or more criminal-justiceoriented approaches to the problem have 

advantages over less aggressive approaches or ones that emphasize other institutions such as child protective services or 

mental health agencies. Some communities have clearly made this problem a law 

enforcement priority. Although there are 

many reasons to think that such a priority could have benefits for the community 

and victims and result in a reduction of 

sex offending, these are propositions that 

researchers must evaluate. On the other 

hand, questions have been raised about 

whether particularly harsh or stigmatizing 

community policies—for example placing 

juveniles on public sex offender registries 

or excluding these youth from normal 

social interactions—may have unintended 

negative consequences, such as deterring reporting, decreasing juvenile justice 

Table 4: Juvenile Sex Offenders as a Percentage of All Juvenile Violent 

Offenders, by Agency Size 

Quartile (%)

Agency population* Percent Lower Upper

Less than 50,000 7.3 1.9 11.5

50,000–100,000 6.3 3.2 9.5

100,000–300,000 6.7 4.1 11.9

More than 300,000 4.7 3.4 12.1

*Table includes only agencies classified by NIBRS as cities (population more than 5,000) and which 

reported at least 10 juvenile violent offenders (N = 1,010 agencies). 

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based 

Reporting System, 2004.

expect from studies of clinical populations 

in which a typical offender is a single 

teenager victimizing a younger child. 

Although the clinical literature on juvenile 

sex offenders has not emphasized teenager-on-teenager sexual assault, the NIBRS 

data suggest that this problem is very 

prevalent among middle- and late-adolescent males. It is possible that the juvenile 

justice system processes group-involved 

and teenager-on-teenager cases differently 

or that these offenders are less likely to 

receive services. How the system handles 

youth and how well current juvenile 
system involvement in cases, or hindering 

youths’ prosocial developmental that may 

lead to increased crime risk (Letourneau 

and Armstrong, 2008). 

Conclusion 

The issue of juvenile sex offenses against 

minors, like most issues involving sex 

crimes and minors, will continue to 

attract considerable controversy and 

debate. Such debates can often continue 

unresolved or with questionable policy 

outcomes in the absence of good epidemiology and other research about the problem and its dynamics. The NIBRS dataset, 

which is growing to encompass an ever 

larger number of jurisdictions nationwide, 

is one resource that can help provide 

some empirical perspective and should 

continue to be analyzed for the insights it 

can offer. 

For Further Information 

This Bulletin presents information taken 

from the National Incident-Based Reporting 

System, 2004. 

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Acknowledgments 

This Bulletin was prepared by David Finkelhor, Ph.D., professor of sociology and 

director, Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire, 

Durham, NH; Richard Ormrod, Ph.D., research professor, Crimes against Children 

Research Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH; and Mark Chaffin, 

Ph.D., professor of pediatrics, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, 

Oklahoma City, OK. 

This Bulletin was prepared under cooperative 

agreement number 2005-JL-FX-0048 from the 

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), U.S. Department of Justice. 

Points of view or opinions expressed in this 

document are those of the authors and do not 

necessarily represent the official position or 

policies of OJJDP or the U.S. Department of 

Justice. 

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency 

Prevention is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau 

of Justice Assistance; the Bureau of Justice 

Statistics; the Community Capacity Development Office; the National Institute of Justice; 

the Office for Victims of Crime; and the Office 

of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART).