Child Sexual Abuse Became More Rare Just As Porn Became More Available

Child Sexual Abuse Has Fallen Greatly Since The Early 1990s

As of 2016, the rate of substantiated child maltreatment has shown little change over the past several years. It is, however, considerably lower than in 1990, having fallen from 13 incidents per 1,000 children to 9 per 1,000. Rates of physical, sexual, and psychological or emotional abuse have declined the most since 2000, while rates of neglect have declined the least.

From 1990 to 1994, the number of cases of child abuse or neglect that were either substantiated or indicated rose from 861,000 to 1,032,000, reaching a rate of 15 incidents per 1,000 children under age 18 in 1994. From 1994 to 1999, the trend reversed, with the number of cases dropping to 829,000, a rate of 12 per 1,000, in 1999. . . . In 2016, there were approximately 672,000 maltreated children in the United States, a rate of 9.1 per 1,000. . . .

Reported rates of neglect are higher than those for other types of child maltreatment. In 2016, 7 children per 1,000 were reported victims of neglect, compared with 1.7 for physical abuse, 0.8 for sexual abuse, and 0.5 for psychological or emotional abuse (Appendix 2). 

Among all maltreated children, the proportion with reported neglect increased from 49 percent in 1990 to 75 percent in 2016; those with reported sexual abuse declined from 17 to 9 percent, and those with reported physical abuse declined from 27 to 18 percent. Less frequent types of maltreatment, including those classed as “unknown,” accounted for the balance (Appendix 1). 

Rates of physical and sexual abuse have declined over the past two decades, while rates of neglect have fluctuated. From 1990 to 2016, rates of substantiated physical abuse declined by 40 percent and sexual abuse rates declined by 62 percent; in contrast, rates of substantiated neglect fell by just 8 percent over this period.2

From here.

Other surveys show that the median age of first sexual intercourse is rising for both men and women, and that high school and younger students are having sex less often that they did in the previous few decades. Some trends from 1954 to 2003 are reported in this report. A nice chart illustrating the long term trend can be found here.

According to this source, as of 2017: Teen birth rates, and overall abortion rates, were at record lows as of 2017. "Adolescent pregnancies are also decreasing precipitously, down 55 percent between 1990 and 2011. Early data suggest those numbers will continue to fall: Birthrates for women between the ages of 15 and 19 declined an additional 35 percent between 2011 and 2016, hitting the lowest levels since CDC began collecting data."

Based upon sources cited in a 2016 post at this blog: "There were about 1,030 children born to mothers aged 15 to 17 in New Jersey in 2014 (a rate of 5.8 per 1,000 girls aged 15-17 . . . down 78% from a peak in 1991), and about 37 children born to mothers under age 15 in New Jersey in 2014." If 2014 was equal to the average number of marriages by minor girls from 1995 to 2012 in New Jersey, 193 girls under age 18 in New Jersey were married in that year, including 9 girls between the ages of 13 and 15. Marriages in New Jersey for 16 and 17 year olds can be authorized with parental consent and 91% of them are of girls under eighteen to men over the age of eighteen. Roughly 19% of teen mothers in New Jersey marry before turning age 18. This is almost certainly a number that has declined over time, so it probably overstates the marriage rate for girls under age 18 in New Jersey.

According to this 2012 report: "In 2012, adolescents aged <15 and 15–19 years accounted for 0.4% and 12.2% of all abortions, respectively, and had abortion rates of 0.8 and 9.2 abortions per 1,000 adolescents aged <15 and 15–19 years, respectively. From 2003 to 2012, the percentage of abortions accounted for by adolescents aged 15–19 years decreased 27% and their abortion rate decreased 40%. These decreases were greater than the decreases for women in any older age group." Note that abortions performed for girls under the age of 15 are so rare that statistical significant becomes an issue in trend measurements except for very large sample sizes, since only one abortion in 250 involves a girl under the age of 15.

Another 2012 post at this blog has similar statistics.

A 2010 post at this blog noted that:  "According to the CDC report: "The [birth] rate for the youngest teenagers, 10-14 years, fell from 0.6 to 0.5 per 1,000, the lowest level ever reported. . . . The birth rate for teenagers 15-17 years declined 7 percent to 20.1 per 1,000. This rate dropped 9 percent from 2007 (22.1) to 2009, and was 48 percent lower than the rate reported in 1991 (38.6 per 1,000)." Teen births are down 59% from their 1957 modern peak, about 33% from their most recent peak in the late 1980s (when I was 15-19 years old), and significantly below the depressed levels of World War II which rebounded from a long period of muted fertility with the baby boom. With the exception of a surge in teen birth rates in the late 1980s and some small, short term statistical blips, teen birth rates have declined steadily from the 1957 peak of the baby boom to the present."

Overall rapes declined 24% from 2001 to 2010, and declined further in both the late 1990s and the early part of the current decade.

Access To Free Pornography Online Has Increased Greatly Since The Early 1990s

Internet access was first available for people other than scientists and military users in the early 1990s. By the year 2000, about 50% of Americans had Internet access, and it rose to about 84% by 2015. The rise of free pornography available over the Internet lagged only slightly behind the rise in Internet access generally.

The line for Internet use in developed countries, globally, on the chart below from Wikipedia, closely parallels the trends in the United States:

Online Pornography Is Not Causing Increased Rates Of Child Sexual Assault

As shown above, the rise in rates of Internet access, which also brought the rise of access to free pornography videos, also coincides with large declines in the rate of sexual assaults overall, and record low teen pregnancy rates, teen birth rates, and teen abortion rates, including all time record lows for pregnancies in girls under age 15.

This data suggests that the concern that increased access to pornography over the Internet has fueled increased rates of child sexual assault, appears to be unfounded, although it is not impossible that, for example, child to child sexual assaults (which have always been, and continue to be, a minority of sexual assaults on children) have risen for this reason. 

Notably, this source, while calling the numbers alarming, does not make any statements regarding whether this is become more or less common, or what proportion of child sexual assault cases this involves. It also provides no data demonstrating what share of these cases involve pornography viewing by perpetrators.

For example, according to this 2015 source, "96% of people who sexually abuse children are male, and 76.8% of people who sexually abuse children are adults." This implies that 23.2% of perpetrators are under the age of eighteen (predominantly boys). The same source states that 91% of sexual assault victims are female. And, a minority of victims are children. The same source states that "12.3% of women were age 10 or younger at the time of their first rape/victimization, and 30% of women were between the ages of 11 and 17. 27.8% of men were age 10 or younger at the time of their first rape/victimization." Of course, one would not be at all surprised to find that the victims of child perpetrators of sexual assault are themselves young. This statistic doesn't distinguish between adolescent and pre-pubescent boys who commit sexual assaults, although I suspect that older offenders are more common than younger offenders. According to this source: "82% of all victims under 18 are female."

A different data set finds with regard to victims of child sexual abuse that:

Out of the yearly 63,000 sexual abuse cases substantiated, or found strong evidence, by Child Protective Services (CPS), the perpetrator was most often the parent: 

80% of perpetrators were a parent

6% were other relatives

5% were "other" (from siblings to strangers)

4% were unmarried partners of a parent

This would suggest that significantly less than 16% of child sexual assaults are committed by other children (presumably the relationship to the perpetrator was unknown or not available in 5% of cases in the sample), although child to child sexual assaults are probably disproportionately unlikely to be reported to Child Protective Services.

Wikipedia examines the issue of child on child sexual abuse in this entry. It notes that:

The incidence of child-on-child sexual abuse is not known with any certainty, similar to abuse by adults. It frequently goes unreported because it is not widely known of in the public, and often occurs outside of adults' direct supervision. Even if known by adults, it is sometimes dismissed as harmless by those who do not understand the implications. In particular, intersibling abuse is under-reported relative to the reporting rates for parent-child sexual abuse, and disclosure of the incest by the victim during childhood is rare. 

This implies that the long term trend in the rate at which this happens is unknown and may be heavily influenced by changes in reporting rate as opposed to changes in incidence rates.

It seems more likely that this is a case of "moral panic" at a time when the problem is actually becoming much less prevalent.

I am not claiming that greater pornography availability caused reduced rates of child sexual assault. In all likelihood, other causes were much more important.

For example, almost all other kinds of crime also became much less common in this time period.

But, I am claiming, that the claim that greater pornography availability increased rates of child sexual assault is strongly disfavored by the available data. If child sexual assault rates are down dramatically to near record lows, in a time period when pornography access has seen the biggest increase in the history of the world, it is unlikely that pornography access is causing increased rates of child sexual assaults.

Links Between Mental Health And Physical Health

* Eczema patients at 36% higher risk of suicide attempts.

* Infections in kids tied to subsequent mental illness risk.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday, found that infections requiring hospitalizations were associated with an about 84% increased risk of being diagnosed with any mental disorder and an about 42% increased risk of using psychotropic drugs to treat a mental disorder. Less severe infections treated with anti-infective medications, like antibiotics, were associated with increased risks of 40% and 22%, respectively, the study found. . . .

The researchers found associations between any treated infection and the increased risk of later being prescribed medication for various childhood and adolescent mental disorders, with the risks differing for specific disorders. 

Risks were increased for schizophrenia spectrum disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, personality and behavior disorders, mental retardation, autism spectrum disorders, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder/conduct disorder and tic disorders[.]

The last sentence of the first paragraph of the quotation from the news story above doesn't really make sense. The reason for the correlation is not known. The study does not support the claim that not treating an infection will prevent mental illness.

The data involve 1 million people in Denmark born from 1995 to 2012, which centralized health records make this kind of big data research possible and reliable. It is basically measuring childhood mental health conditions rather than adult conditions.

Beyond Monetary Compensation To Claimants, The Case For New Remedies

New Remedies That Prevent Future Harm, And Remedy Past Harm To Similarly Situated Persons, As Well As Compensating Past Harm To Claimants

There are some powers which courts either don't have, or rarely exercise, but should have, especially in public law cases (i.e. lawsuits involving governmental entities).

* The power to terminate the employment of someone, especially public employees and elected officials, who is found to have engaged in misconduct in an official capacity or related to that person's employment in a civil or criminal case. 

For example, if a police officer is found to have violated someone's civil rights, a court should have the power to order that the police officer who did so be terminated from his employment as a police officer.

* To revoke the occupational or business license of a party that is found in a lawsuit or criminal case, to have engaged in conduct that case that shows that the party is not fit to continue to engage in that occupation or business, or to prohibit a person in this situation from engaging in a type of occupation or business in the future when that occupation or business is not subject to a licensing requirement.

For example, someone who embezzled construction trust funds might have their general contractor's license revoked.

* The power to order a defendant who has been found to be engaging in conduct that violates a law or contractual obligation to act in a manner that conforms to that law or contractual obligation in all cases on a systemic basis, both going forward, and by proactively remedying the harm that people who aren't a party to the lawsuit have suffered in the past from the systemic practice.

For example, if a government agency or business is found to have compounded interest daily on a loan where interest is only legally allowed to be compounded annually, the party who committed the wrong should be required to calculate interest for everyone correctly going forward and to recalculated the interest owed in past transactions and make an adjusting payment going as far back as the statute of limitations extends. The offender should not simply be allowed to repay the plaintiff, while continuing to proceed illegally as to everyone else.

While, in theory, some of the remedies I discuss here could be ordered as injunctive relief, they very rarely are despite the fact that they make lots of sense.

While these remedies are particularly compelling in public law cases against governments, they also make sense in many lawsuits against non-governmental organizations and businesses, especially big businesses.

Background: Traditional Remedies

In a lawsuit, the principal remedy is the money judgment in favor of someone bringing a claim against one or more persons against whom a claim was brought. Money judgments can then be enforced by placing liens on real property, executing upon and attaching personal property (with a lien in place while the execution and attachment process proceeds), and by garnishment of amounts owed to the judgment debtor (e.g. wages) and financial assets of the debtor controlled by a third party (e.g. a bank account) including a special kind of garnishment involving limited liability entities called a "charging order."

There are a few other common remedies in lawsuits. One is an order to turn over possession of real property to someone (a writ of restitution) or to turn over possession of tangible personal property (the end result of a replevin action). Another is an order directing that the clerk of the court sign a document on behalf of a party who is obligated to do so but refuses to do so. 

Another remedy is an order declaring the legal rights of one or more parties to a lawsuit, such as determining who owns real property, who will become the owner of property following a divorce, what a contract provision means, or what the amount of rent owed between parties is when it is set by a formula or process whose amount isn't transparently obvious.

All of these rights are available more or less presumptively whenever a person bringing a claim can show an entitlement to relief. While courts are often called "dispute resolution" forms, more accurately, they are forums in which one enforces legal rights, whether or not there is a dispute. Indeed, the lion's share of judgments entered in the courts are money judgments issued by default or in uncontested cases.

A final kind of remedy available in a lawsuit is injunctive relief. But, unlike other kinds of remedies, injunctive relief is not presumptively available when someone breaks the law in a way that hurts someone else. Instead, one must not only show a legal harm to the person seeking relief caused by the person against whom relief is sought. One must also pass a screening test to determine if another more conventional remedy (a remedy at law) is available, to determine if irreparable harm will result from failing to issue an injunction, and that the injunction serves the public interest, in addition to determining, as one would in a request for any other remedy, that a legal right violated by the person seeking the relief has been violated or is imminently at risk of being violated by the person against whom an injunction is sought.

The courts also have special provisions for seeking preliminary relief before there is time to fully adjudicate a case on the merits. In a case where traditional remedies are sought this is called a request for a "pre-judgment writ of attachment" and in a case where injunctive relief is sought, this is called a "temporary retraining order" or "preliminary injunction." In those cases, one must also show a likelihood of success on the merits and an imminent need for action prior to a trial, and one must usually post a bond to cover harm caused in the event that the person requesting it does not prevail on the merits. (There is also a special preliminary remedy called a lis pendens in cases involving real estate that puts the world on notice that the property is the subject of a lawsuit and that anyone who obtains an interest in the property takes subject to the outcome of the lawsuit.)

High Rent Relative To Income Plus Rent Increases Equal Homelessness

Homelessness in the United States is heavily concentrated in metropolitan areas where rents are more than 30% of income and rents have increased.

The researchers grouped the 386 markets they studied into six “clusters” based on homelessness risk. 

One cluster — which is composed of 54 regions, including big coastal cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as Las Vegas, St. Louis, Missouri, and Anchorage, Alaska — is home to 47 percent of the US’s entire homeless population, despite only housing 15 percent of all Americans. The cities in this cluster have higher rates of homelessness than other parts of the country, as well as higher average rents; nearly half of all renters in these cities are rent-burdened, based on the report’s findings. 

Conversely, another cluster that includes central Minnesota, Provo, Utah, and the entire state of Rhode Island has the lowest rate of homelessness, the lowest poverty rate, and lower-than-average rents. More than one-third of all Americans live in this cluster, according to the report, but it’s home to just 14 percent of the US’s total homeless population.

From here, based heavily on this Pew Report.

In Denver there have been particularly high levels of homeless families with children, which fits this narrative. 

Limiting Access To Drugs Makes Substance Abuse Worse

Lots of substance abuse starts out as self-medication for conditions like depression or chronic pain for which prescribed drugs are not available, and people who have access to better alternatives tend to switch unless they have become addicted in the meantime. The article doesn't point this out, but this has happened with marijuana legalization as this less addictive and harmful drug is substituted for alcohol and opioids as well.

We develop a theory of rational self-medication. The idea is that forward-looking individuals, lacking access to better treatment options, attempt to manage the symptoms of mental and physical pain outside of formal medical care. They use substances that relieve symptoms in the short run but that may be harmful in the long run. For example, heavy drinking could alleviate current symptoms of depression but could also exacerbate future depression or lead to alcoholism. Rational self-medication suggests that, when presented with a safer, more effective treatment, individuals will substitute towards it. To investigate, we use forty years of longitudinal data from the Framingham Heart Study and leverage the exogenous introduction of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). We demonstrate an economically meaningful reduction in heavy alcohol consumption for men when SSRIs became available. Additionally, we show that addiction to alcohol inhibits substitution. Our results suggest a role for rational self-medication in understanding the origin of substance abuse. Furthermore, our work suggests that punitive policies targeting substance abuse may backfire, leading to substitution towards even more harmful substances to self-medicate. In contrast, policies promoting medical innovation that provide safer treatment options could obviate the need to self-medicate with dangerous or addictive substances.

From Michael E. Darden, Nicholas W. Papageorge, "Rational Self-Medication" NBER Working Paper No. 25371 (December 2018).