Sex crime or developmentally appropriate sexual behaviour? Responding to children and young people's (harmful sexual) behaviour.

• In Event: Common and Less Common Youth Crimes: Examples from Israel, Greece, Poland, Spain & UK

Abstract

Children and young people are responsible for a significant proportion of all sexual abuse both within the family, in peer group contexts and in the wider community (Hackett et al., 2013). Similarly, across many jurisdictions, reported sexual crime relating to young people now exceeds reports of adult sex offending (NPCC, 2024). Yet policies, practices and interventions designed to identify and respond to such behaviours are under-developed currently. This presentation will start by setting out the scale of the problem, as well as outlining why it is important to take both a criminological and developmental approach. Then Simon will describe the development of an initial response tool which helps practitioners to distinguish between sexual behaviours being presented by children and young people that are developmentally expected, those that are problematic and those that harmful and abusive. Extending Hackett's (2010) 'continuum model of sexual behaviour', the freely available tool offers a new approach to understanding children and young people's sexual behaviour in context. Simon will describe the development of the new model, its empirical underpinnings, and how it can be used in youth offending and child welfare contexts to ensure appropriate and proportionate responses to young people across the continuum of developmentally healthy, harmful and abusive behaviour.

References:

Hackett, S. (2010). Children, young people and sexual violence. In Children Behaving Badly: Exploring peer violence between children and young people. Barter, C. & Berridge, D. London: Blackwell Wiley.

Hackett, S. and Phillips, J. and Masson, H. and Balfe, M. (2013) 'Individual, family and abuse characteristics of 700 British child and adolescent sexual abusers.', Child abuse review., 22 (4). pp. 232-245.

National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) (2024) National Analysis of Police-Recorded Child Sexual Abuse & Exploitation (CSAE) Crimes Report Available at: https://www.vkpp.org.uk/assets/Files/Publications/National-Analysis-of-police-recorded-CSAE-Crimes-Report-2022-external.pdf

Author

• Simon Hackett, Durham University