Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents | Page 2

66 (2)
Proposals for Administrative Action 67 (3) Parental Example 68
XIX. Appreciation 68
Appendix A: Table of Sexual Offences for Which Proceedings Were
Taken in New Zealand 69
Appendix B: List of Witnesses, Submissions, and Order of Appearance

70

I. Preliminary Observations
=(1) Sensational Press Reports=
In the second week of July 1954 various newspapers throughout the
Dominion featured reports of proceedings in the Magistrate's Court at
Lower Hutt against youths charged with indecent assault upon, or
carnal knowledge of, girls under 16 years of age.
The prosecuting officer was reported as saying that:
The police investigations revealed a shocking degree of immoral
conduct which spread into sexual orgies perpetrated in several private
homes during the absence of parents, and in several second rate Hutt
Valley theatres, where familiarity between youths and girls was rife and
commonplace.
He also stated that:
... in many cases the children came from excellent homes.
A few weeks previously reports had appeared in the press of statements
made by a Child Welfare Officer and a Stipendiary Magistrate that
juvenile delinquency (meaning delinquency in general and not only
sexual delinquency) had more than doubled in recent years, and that in
many cases the offenders came from:
... materially good homes where they are well provided for.
Such statements naturally provoked a good deal of private and public
comment throughout the Dominion. The anxiety of parents deepened,
and one leading newspaper asserted editorially that:
It is probably quite safe to assert that nothing that has occurred in the
Dominion for a long time has caused so much public dismay and so

much private worry as the disclosure of moral delinquency among
children and adolescents.
There is room for difference of opinion as to whether or not the ensuing
public discussion of sexual offending was desirable. On the one hand it
provoked many conversations on the subject between children
themselves and a noticeable desire to purchase newspapers on the way
to and from school. On the other hand the focusing of attention on the
existence of the peril to school children caused many parents,
temporarily at any rate, to take a greater interest in the training and care
of their children than they might otherwise have taken; it caused some
heads of schools to arrange for sex instruction; and it also resulted in a
public demand that something should be done to bring about a better
state of morality in the community.
Following hard upon the newspaper reports of these cases in the Hutt
Valley there was the news that two girls, each aged about 16 years had
been arrested in Christchurch on a charge of murdering the mother of
one of them. It soon became widely known (and this fact was
established at their subsequent trial) that these girls were abnormally
homosexual in behaviour.
There were also published in the press extracts from the annual report
of the Justice Department to the effect that sexual crime in New
Zealand was, per head of population, half as much again as the sexual
crime in England and Wales. The reasons why the Committee does not
accept this statement at its face value are stated later under Section IV
(2).
=(2) Press Reports from Overseas=
In view of the fact that the happenings in the Hutt Valley were reported
in all New Zealand newspapers, and by many newspapers in Australia
and Great Britain, the Committee points out that the increase of sexual
delinquency is not confined to any one district or any one country.
It cannot be too strongly asserted that the great majority of the young
people of the Hutt Valley are as healthy-minded and as well behaved as

those in other districts, whether in New Zealand or elsewhere. It just
happened that, through the voluntary confession of one girl in Petone,
many cases were immediately brought to the knowledge of the police.
In the absence of comparable statistics from other countries, the
Committee can merely quote from some of the reports received in New
Zealand at about the same time that the Hutt Valley cases were
reported.
(a) England
In Monmouthshire last year there was an increase of 88 per cent in
sexual offences. The biggest increases recorded were for indecent
assault on females--132 in 1953, compared with 75 in 1952--and for
offences against girls under 16 years of age. In his annual report the
Chief Constable states that this shocking record is a further indication
of the general lowering of moral standards ...--The "Police Review"
(London), 19 February 1954.
(b) New South Wales
POLICE UNCOVER WILD TEENAGE SEX ORGIES
Detectives have uncovered evidence of an amazing sex cult in which a
bodgie "high priest" and a number of pretty teenagers indulged in wild
orgies in a Sydney suburb.
It is alleged that the "high priest" made the