Sexual Assault as a Crime Against the Young
Youth is almost as big a risk factor for sexual victimization as gender
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When we think about sexual assault, we usually see it as a crime against women. And for good reason: Most victims are female, just as most perpetrators are male.
But a fascinating and sobering paper by criminologists Richard Felson and Patrick Cundiff suggests a subtle but important shift in emphasis. Drawing on eight years of FBI data covering nearly 300,000 cases, they argue that sexual assault is almost as much an offense against the young as it is against women. To focus on gender but not age would be nearly as big a blunder as focusing on age but not gender. If we’re serious about understanding sexual assault - and preventing it - we need to take both factors into account.
Age and Sexual Assault: Three Key Findings
Felson and Cundiff uncovered three major age-related trends in their FBI data.
1. Female Adolescents Suffer the Highest Rates of Victimization
The first concerns the age distribution of female victims. As shown in the graph below, the risk of victimization surged at puberty, peaked in the teen years, then declined rapidly from that point on. By the time women reached their 50s, rates of sexual assault were negligible. The modal age of female victims was 15.
This vividly illustrates the importance of age as a risk factor for sexual assault. As Felson and Cundiff pointed out, a 15-year-old girl was nearly 13 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than a 35-year-old woman.