Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/rape/)
The girls at New Hampshire's youth detention center called their dormitory leader "Peepin' Dave" because they say he leered at them through a bathroom window. But David Ball, later promoted to chief of operations, also is accused of much worse.
Juvenile offenses involving property, drug and public order offenses, combined, declined in 2019 to their lowest levels since 2005, according to recently released National Center on Juvenile Justice data also showing that probation, rather than detention, increasingly was assigned in five categories of juvenile crime.
While awareness of sex trafficking has grown, too little attention is given to how this terrible violence impacts girls of color. In Washington, D.C., Courtney’s House is the only survivor-led program serving trafficked youth. Of the young people who receive services from Courtney’s House, 87% are girls of color.
This disparate impact is not limited to girls in the D.C. area but is evidenced across the country. In King County, Washington, 84% of child sex trafficking survivors are girls and 52% of child survivors are Black even though Black girls comprise a mere 1% of the population. In 2017, among survivors receiving services in Minnesota, nearly 75% were BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) and 50% of all survivors were girls and young women under age 25 (compared to boys and young men who comprised 6% of all survivors).
The disproportionate rates at which girls of color are trafficked is not coincidental.
Some of the worst government-sanctioned human rights abuses committed against children are happening right here in the United States. Earlier this year, a child sex crime survivor in Ohio had her life sentence commuted by Gov. Mike DeWine. At the age of 15, Alexis was sentenced to life in prison for participating in a robbery where the man who had been raping and sex trafficking her was killed.
As a result of mandatory sentencing schemes that fail to consider childhood trauma, children like Alexis receive the exact same punishment as adults without regard for their victim or child status. For those who remain puzzled about why the justice system doesn’t give these children the benefit of self-defense laws, you are not alone. Many self-defense laws don’t protect child sex crime victims who commit acts of violence against their abusers.
I never said "no."
In fact, I said "I love you."
He said "No, you don't."
He also said he was going to kill me.
I don't know if I believed him.
I recently read an Associated Press interview with singer and actress Mary J. Blige in which she shared her personal account of sexual harassment, beginning at age 5. “From age 5 to 17, I [went] through hell with sexual harassment … By the time I got to the music business, it was like, ‘Don't touch me or I'll kill you,’” she said.
When the judge announced that Etienne Rene had been found guilty, Rene turned to Loutchama, the girl he had raped a year earlier, when she was just 12, and cursed her.
Three teens convicted of raping a 13-year-old classmate were sentenced to probation by California juvenile officials after serving 120 days behind bars. The charges, forcible rape in concert and lewd acts with a child under 14 – both felony accounts – carried a maximum punishment of nine years in juvenile detention, The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif. reported. Some members of the community said probation was too lenient of a punishment for something as serious as rape, but youth law experts contended the juvenile justice system was designed to give offenders the opportunity to reform. Juveniles convicted of rape in California do not have to register as sex offenders, said The Press-Enterprise.
Children featured in pornographic pictures are asking for financial restitution, and they’re getting it. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled Friday that a Georgia man caught with child pornography must pay a girl shown in an incest video, even though he did not shoot the pictures or attack the child. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports Ricky Lee McDaniel must pay $12,700 to the child who was 10 years old when her own father raped her and recorded the attack. In a written statement the girl said that every day she knows “someone is watching the most terrifying moments of my life and taking grotesque pleasure in them”
U.S. Attorney Sally Yates calls McDaniel a “secondary abuser” who should help pay for the victim’s treatment and counseling, adding that children are re-victimized every time someone views their images.
The New York Times profiles a similar case in Connecticut. A young woman who was molested by her uncle is asking for a total of $3.4 million in damages to be collected from everyone caught with an image of her. Her pictures have been circulating online for the last 10 years and turn up often in child porn cases.