Child Abuse and Neglect

About half of all sexual offences committed against prepubescent children are committed by other children. In the same time 97 to 98 percent of children convicted of a sexual offense are never reconvicted of another one. "This shows that adolescent sexual offending is highly variable and it suggests strongly that we can prevent that first offense. Yet instead of focusing on prevention we focus nearly all of our efforts on punishment." - says professor Letourneau and explains how initiatives that target juvenile sex offenders can play an important role in preventing future offenses. 

The survey and research were prepared by the Empowering Children Foundation's researchers for WHO in years 2016-2017. The report was published in February 2018.

In total, 643 studies from 171 countries, containing 13,830 separate age-specific and sex-specific past-year prevalence estimates were included in the analysis. Only studies of sufficient scale to be representative were included, focusing on international datasets collected across many countries.

© Rafael Ben-Ari – Fotolia.com

Migrant and asylum-seeking children traveling without parents or relatives (so called unaccompanied), are being locked up in police cells and detention centers in Greece. In August 2017, in response to the Human Rights Watch (HRW) open letter, Greece's migration ministry pledged that by the end of 2017, all unaccompanied children will be placed in special shelters or safe zones. HRW informes that in December 2017 54 unaccompanied children were still detained in so-called "protective custody" in police station cells or in immigrant detention centers.