A recent study by a leading American researcher in this field, the sociologist David Finkelhor, showed that in the fourteen- to seventeen-year-old age bracket, ‘most offences are at the hands of other juveniles (76.7 per cent for males and 70.1 per cent for females), primarily acquaintances’, and of that number, girls are four times more likely to be the victim than boys.5 It appears that while media and public interest is intently focused on the idea of the ‘typical’ CSO as a creepy adult stranger targeting a prepubertal victim,6 the most common victim of child sexual assault is a teenage
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