Protecting Children from Sex Oenders
This Special Issue of Child Abuse Review is dedicated to the topic of working with sex oenders in order to reduce the risk of children being sexually victimised. The Issue will concentrate on the problem of child sexual abuse from the perspective of the oender. This reยฏects the latest local and national initiatives in dealing with this pervasive and repulsive problem. Thus, in addition to the work of Area Child Protection Committees who oversee the registration of children at risk of maltreatment, each Local Authority has recently seen the introduction of Public Protection Panels, whose responsibility is to oversee the registration of convicted sex oenders and assess their risk of repeat oences.
The Number of Convicted Sex Oenders
According to the Home Oce 1995, 1 in 10 crimes of violence (which represent 6% of all crimes recorded by the police) is a sexual oence. Home Oce statistics on the sexual abuse of children are recorded as a subset of `serious sexual oences', which include unlawful sexual intercourse, incest, and gross indecency with a child. They also include oences concerned with indecent photographs and the sexual exploitation of children. Figures for the 1993 population of England and Wales, show that 110 000 men have a conviction for a sexual oence against a child, Of men born in England and Wales in 1953, 7 in 1000 have a conviction of sexual oences against a child, by age 40. Most of these men were convicted for an oence with a girl victim (6 in 1000) rather than with a boy victim (1 in 1000). Overall, sexual abuse of children made up the majority of serious sexual oences committed by men under 40 years of age, with at least a third of oenders having committed their ยฎrst sexual oence before the age of 18 .
However, due to the secretive nature of sexual assaults on children and the problems of obtaining reliable evidence many child sexual assaults go unreported and only a small minority of cases come to the attention of the police. Even a smaller number of cases result in the perpetrator being charged and convicted. On average men convicted of sexual