Our investigation airing November 7th is a tough one. "Younger Sex Offenders" is the title. We spent two years getting this story on the air. Getting mothers of children who had been raped or molested to talk about the issue was a serious and difficult undertaking. After much effort, reporter Lauren Reynolds and producer Kristen Castillo were able to get the mothers to talk. And the story that resulted is very intriguing.

It involves a very controversial subject--sexual attacks
by teens on underage children. In one case, a four year old girl was raped by her 14 year old cousin. Years later, her mother is emotionally distraught over the rape and the little girl, has some serious mental health issues today related to this ugly crime. It would be six years after the rape, before the mother would find out about the rape. At that time the attacker was 20 years old. The young rapist did a short jail stint and was placed on probation. We can never know who he is, the court records are sealed. There will be no warnings on websites about him or his history.

In the second case, a camp counselor at a skate camp molested an 8 year old. Because the counselor was 18 at the time, his information is published on the internet.
The reason, he committed this crime at age 18. He had two other victims that the families swear happened when the counselor was under 18 years old but it was never proven in court.

We also found there was a 40 percent increase in sex cases involving juveniles over the past two decades. This is an incredible jump--we are not sure of the cause of the giant increase. You could argue many different reasons, from sexual content of the media and music to earlier puberty. The bigger questions are when is a child, a child anymore?

A psychologist who deals with these sorts of cases says young sexual criminals can be rehabilitated successfully. She says that the recidivism rate is far lower than adult pedophiles. They deserve a chance to get their lives back together, she argues.

The mother of the little girl who was raped thinks they should be treated as an adult--tried as an adult, and then have his information posted on websites so the community is aware of them.

Watch the story if you get an opportunity--it's riveting.

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