Comparisons between juvenile and adult sexual offenders on the multidimensional assessment of sex and aggression

The serious societal problem of juvenile sexual offending has elicited concern from community, clinical, legal and research quarters (Barbaree et al., 1993). Juveniles account for 30 to 60 per cent of cases of child molestation and 20 to 30 per cent of the rapes reported each year in the United States (Brown et al., 1984; Fehrenback et al., 1986). The widespread concern about juvenile sexual offending has unfortunately not been adequately matched with a sufficient empirical scrutiny of juvenile sexual coercion, and much of the existing research is riddled with methodological flaws (Becker and Hunter, 1997; Knight and Prentky, 1993).