Hetty Johnston
Child protection campaigner Hetty Johnston says the reason the age of sex offenders and their victims is getting lower is probably because of easy access to internet pornography.
The evidence to support such a claim — Either Hetty doesn’t have it or the media didn’t report it. I’m betting the first.
‘Easy access to pornography’ does not mean pornography is being accessed or that young people who committed sex crimes accessed it. And it certainly doesn’t mean those who committed crimes did so because they accessed pornography.
Is there even evidence to suggest a rise in young offender rates, particularly sexual offenders?
Here’s Queensland Police statistics for the number of sexual offences (including rape) committed by persons aged 10 – 14 (cleared or solved).
2006/2007 – 255 by males, 42 by females.
2005/2006 – 277 by males, 47 by females
2004/2005 – 226 by males, 19 by females
2003/2004 – 224 by males, 17 by females
2002/2003 – 260 by males, 15 by females
2001/2002 – 150 by males, 12 by females
2000/2001 – 112 by males, 7 by females
While there’s a rise in offences between 2000 and 2002, there hasn’t been a major increase since. It dropped in 2007.
The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research also shows that finalised matters in the NSW Children’s Court for offenders aged 10 – 14 (all crime) have remained relatively stable since 2001 and have nearly halved since 1997.
QLD’s Minister for Police Judy Spence points out here that in 2007 all sex offences were down:
‘If you take out the historical cases of the sexual offence category, sexual offences including rapes, have actually gone down by 7%.’
In the United States the rate and volume of ‘forcible rape’ decreased in 2006 and was significantly less than the volume and rate was in the early 1990s.
Crime rates aside, this is the second time this year that Hetty Johnston has claimed that pornography or sexualised images in the media is linked to young sex offenders. When are journalists going to let a good quote slide and pull her up on it?
If Johnston is throwing around such wild and unfounded accusations in the media, imagine what she’s tabling at Senator Conroy’s Cyber-Safety Consultative Group (the panel advising on issues such as mandatory ISP filtering).
