Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents | Page 5

60 persons dealt with.)

=(2) Cases in Other Districts=
It cannot be supposed that sexual misbehaviour was confined to the
Hutt district. Similar environmental conditions obtain in other districts.
It was reliably stated in evidence at Wellington that if a girl elsewhere
were to carry her story to the police similar revelations would be made
there.
In Auckland matters came to the knowledge of the Committee which
do cause grave concern. Here again the Committee was not engaged on
a fact-finding mission, but was seeking to evaluate the evidence in a
broad way.
It appears that, a few weeks before the Hutt cases were reported, the
headmaster of an intermediate school informed the police of a case of
theft of money by a schoolboy who was found to have £22 in his wallet.
In the course of their inquiries into this the police were started on a
train of investigation into sexual practices of children on their way
home from school, at the homes of parents, and elsewhere. As a result,
about 40 boys and girls in the 12--15-year-old group (but including also
a girl of 9 years) were implicated. In addition to this, there were two
cases before the Court in which several girls had given evidence of
their agreement to sexual intercourse with older men. One of the
accused men has recently been sentenced to a term of imprisonment,
while the other is still awaiting trial. As this latter case, and also a
charge of murder against a boy aged 14, are still sub judice, the
Committee is unable to comment on any of the factors involved.
This much may, however, be said that, from the police, welfare officers,
a headmaster, and social workers in Auckland, the Committee learned
of an accumulation of sordid happenings occurring within a short space
of time which people who regard themselves as men of the world could
scarcely believe possible in this Dominion.
No submissions were presented to the Committee that sexual offending
by juveniles in the South Island had increased to any alarming extent.
Such cases as were mentioned to the Committee followed previously
recognized patterns.

IV. Has Juvenile Immorality Increased?
=(1) Difficulties of Comparison in Absence of Statistics=
In seeking to ascertain whether immorality among children and
adolescents has increased or is increasing it should be pointed out that
there are not any statistics available either in New Zealand or elsewhere
from which reliable guidance may be obtained. Sexual immorality is,
by its very nature, a clandestine vice. Any available figures can
comprise only such things as detected offences against the law, or
registration of ex-nuptial births, or births which have resulted from
pre-marital intercourse. Figures are not available concerning immoral
acts which do not become the subject of a criminal charge.
Charges of unlawful carnal knowledge or indecent assault arise, for the
most part, from complaints made by females. From feelings of chivalry
or other reasons it is not in the nature of the male to inform on the
female. The common experience is that a charge of sexual impropriety
comes from information supplied by the female. So long as a girl is
prepared to be silent, the offenders remain unknown. As with older
people, so also with children.
Whether sexual laxity has been increasing must be a matter largely of
impression based, perhaps, upon inference from certain known facts.
On this matter there is room for a wide divergence of opinion. If
policemen, teachers, or social workers in the Hutt district had been
asked in June of 1954 whether immorality had increased there, they
would probably have replied that the wave of 1952 had receded and
matters were back to normal. Yet a month later that district had
achieved an unenviable, and even unfair, reputation in this respect.
Sad to relate, the cases in respect of which the police took action in the
Hutt do not represent the full extent of known sexual immorality
among juveniles there. This is shown by the following pieces of
evidence:

(a) The office bearers of one Church gave to the Committee particulars
of several recent cases which had come to their notice in the ordinary
course of their social welfare work (two of them girls who had become
pregnant before their sixteenth birthdays). These were cases which had
not been investigated by the police. It was also the conclusion of these
Church officers that the cases which had been revealed to them were
far outnumbered by those which were not so revealed.
(b) It was quite obvious to the police officials who made the
investigations in July that no useful purpose would be served by
extending their inquiries further.
=(2) Unreliability of Available Statistics for Comparative Purposes=
The previous section was written to show the difficulty of obtaining a
comparison between vice at one period