Local, state officials see younger children committing sex crimes

By COREY TAULE

ctaule@postregister.com

During his five years prosecuting sex crimes in Bonneville County, deputy prosecutor Bruce Pickett has seen a disturbing trend: younger kids committing more sex crimes.

State and local statistics back him up.

In 1998, the state's juvenile sex offender registry contained 64 names. As of last month, it had 131. A constant recycling of criminal kids because offenders leave the registry when they turn 21.

Last year, 469 child molesters were prosecuted in Idaho. Of those, 145 were juveniles. Kids were not only the victims but the perpetrators. Nearly 10 percent of the victims in these cases were not yet 3.

In 2005, 163 juveniles were prosecuted for sex crimes. That number has fluctuated between a low of 116 in 2004 to a high of 167 in 2003, according to the Idaho attorney general's office.

In 2006, Bonneville County prosecuted 48 people for child abuse. Seventeen were juveniles. Of the 26 people prosecuted in 1998, 12 were juveniles.

"It seems like we are prosecuting kids at a younger age for doing more serious sexual acts," Pickett said. "It just seems like what was unacceptable or even incomprehensible 10 years ago is now pretty commonplace."

The connection between sex crimes and childhood abuse is well established. Kids who were abused are more likely to become abusers when they grow up.

But it's more difficult to say whether exposure to pornography at a young age leads to criminal behavior because the Internet -- the tool that has brought porn to the masses -- is still a new invention. It's also hard to say whether increased exposure to porn has led to the spike in children committing more sex crimes.

Pickett prosecuted a man in his 40s for luring a teenager to a motel through the Internet. He's also dealt with cases where kids abused kids.

What he does know is that in five years, there have been hundreds of cases, Pickett said, all with one common denominator.

"I cannot recall a case that I have handled that did not involve pornography," he said.

A recent story in an Australian newspaper showed the child health unit of a local hospital reported this trend: A decade ago, the hospital saw about three cases a year of children sexually harming other children. By 2003, that number had increased to 70 per year.

The behavior included oral sex and forced intercourse with other kids and even animals. Almost all the children involved, the hospital reported, had seen porn online.

Chip Snowden, an Idaho Falls counselor who treats sex offenders, doesn't doubt a connection can be made. From 1982 to 1996, Snowden sampled 200 sex offenders, juvenile and adults. Ninety percent said they were into porn.

"They just said it was a huge factor in their behaviors," Snowden said.

While the Internet brought graphic sexual images to "anybody with a computer and 30 seconds," Pickett said, the real sexual revolution began in the late 1940s with a series of experiments conducted by Dr. Alfred Kinsey.

Kinsey's conclusion that all sex is normal, said longtime critic Dr. Judith Reisman, has led not only to more rapes and sexual assaults, but also an increased sexual awareness among children.

Modern society, Reisman argues, has taken normal boys and girls and turned them into the child criminals that Pickett prosecutes on a regular basis.

"We are training them at the earliest age to be sexually addicted and sexually brutal," Reisman said.

Snowden found that juveniles were more likely than adults to get into sadistic and masochistic porn. Kids who have committed sexual assault, Snowden found, enjoyed viewing and interacting with images of people inflicting and receiving pain.

"We don't have enough police," Snowden said. "We don't have enough probation officers. We don't have enough people watching to be able to keep those people safe in the future. We're counting on them being aware that they have the capacity to continue in this behavior in the future and to seek help if they need it."