According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, juvenile arrest rates in the United States decreased 36 percent between 1996 and 2009. In 2009, there were 5,804 teenage arrests for every 100,000 youths ages 10 through 17 in the United States. This is great news, especially when you couple it with the statistic… Read More

I am currently reading Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by Dr. Joycelyn M. Elders. I like it so far. Anyway, while reading a chapter about censorship today, I was interested by some information. Elders points out that research has found that viewing erotica or pornography does not correlate with antisocial… Read More

I just read a story about a 14-year-old Jehovah’s Witness who refused a blood transfusion and died. The boy refused the transfusion on religious grounds. The boy’s legal guardian is also a Jehovah’s Witness. I have heard some people call it child abuse to allow a kid to refuse needed medical treatment that would save… Read More

Many questions have come up about what qualifies as child abuse. For example, some people have advocated making it illegal for parents to smoke cigarettes in a car with a child, at least with the windows down. Namely because of the very harmful health effects of secondhand smoke, some people see it as child abuse… Read More

I just read a frightening and saddening article in which experts explain that parents have a reluctance to report the sexual abuse of children. The article started with a story about multiple families who had known that a karate instructor sexually abused children more than 10 years before one of his many future victims finally… Read More

It costs a lot less to prevent violent crime and victimization in the first place than to try to rectify the problem afterwards. Once people have committed an act of violence or victimization, we already have a victim and a victimizer–two major problems. The people in society have many ways of preventing violence and victimization.… Read More

I just read an article about an Australian police program called Keeping Me Safe. The program helps teach children how to identify safe people, places, and situations. Additionally, the program will raise awareness about various types of victimization including bullying, harassment, and cybercrime. From what I read in the article, the program sounds great. I… Read More

RealTruth.org recently published an article about the rising rate of child sexual solicitations on the internet. I include an expert: Approximately one in seven youth ages 10-17 have received a sexual solicitation on the Internet, according to research published by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Youth. The study, which compared the online victimization… Read More

A recent article on ABC News offers 12 tips for parents to keep their children safe on the internet. I want to highlight 1, 2, 4, and 12: 1. Spend time with your children online. Have them teach you about their favorite online destinations. 2. Talk to your child about sexual victimization and potential online… Read More

In a sarcastic article about molestation and sex offender rights, Terry Brown cites a real statistic about child molestation: “Sexual assaults committed by youth are a growing concern in this country. Currently, it is estimated that adolescents (ages 13 to 17) account for up to one-fifth of all rapes and one-half of all cases of… Read More

Overprotecting children can backfire. If you try to restrict them, they will turn away from you and sneak around, and then you cannot protect them at all. However, you can easily just keep track of where your children are. Have them call you to check in at a certain time at night or in the… Read More