By Justin George and Christine Reid
Camera Staff Writers

ERIE — It's where you want to raise your kids, people who live here say.

A place where thousands of parents found new homes during a building boom that made Erie the third-fastest growing community in Colorado in the 1990s.

But a rash of child-on-child sexual assaults in this town of 8,500 has some parents thinking twice about their hometown.

Within the last two months, Erie police have arrested five boys in three unrelated cases on suspicion of raping or molesting other children as young as 8. A sixth boy was convicted of similar crimes in August.

• Proposed standards and guidelines TENDENCIES Profile of juvenile sexual aggression: The first offense is most likely to occur when the perpetrator is about 13 or 14 years old. Victims are most likely to be female acquaintances or siblings; rarely are they strangers. A significant minority of youthful child molesters have both female and male victims. Most offenses by a child molester could be construed as coercive rather than violent. Serious delinquency, drug and alcohol abuse and interpersonal aggression are relatively uncommon among teens who molest only younger children. Adolescent male child molesters tend to be shy if not socially isolated, lack self-esteem and are aroused to children but are attracted to girls their own age. Being a victim of some form of abuse or neglect increases the likelihood of sexual offending in adolescence. But most juvenile sex offenders do not appear to have been sex abuse victims, and most victims of child abuse do not become perpetrators. Most males who sexually abuse younger children do not re-offend, at least not sexually, during the five to 10 years following apprehension. There is a fair likelihood that juvenile sex offenders will come to the attention of police for non-sex offenses. Juvenile sex offenders who have been institutionalized are more likely to reappear in court than those who have not. — Source: The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado.

People are puzzled. Why Erie?

Some are shaken.

"My kids are always outside," said eight-year Erie resident Leticia Batrez. She said she had thought Erie was a safe place to raise her three children until a 13-year-old who lives two trailers away was arrested on suspicion of raping and molesting three 12-year-old girls.

"Before, we didn't have to worry about them," Batrez said. "Now I have to watch them constantly."

There are conflicting theories as to why the alleged abuses have taken place.

Authorities agree that juvenile sex offenses are receiving more attention now. Parents and police blame pornography or increasing sexuality on television for what they perceive is a rise in child-on-child sex abuse.

But treatment providers say juvenile sex offenses are unfortunately common and can be found in most cities, towns or neighborhoods.

Everyone seems to agree that juvenile sex abuse is underreported.

One thing is definite: Erie — which prides itself on its annual town fair, homecoming bonfire and small-town feeling — is concerned.

"Obviously, I thought these cases are rare in our jurisdiction," Erie police Det. Brett Callahan said. "Now, we're overrun by them."

Experts say

There are two divergent opinions on the flare-up of child-on-child sexual assaults in Erie: It's an anomaly, or an ongoing phenomenon getting more attention now.

"For people who don't work in this field, it's shocking," said Kitty Sargent, education resource specialist for the Blue Sky Bridge Child and Family Advocacy Program. "But based on what we see, this would be in the news almost daily if all the cases ... were reported to the media."

But Erie police said they have never investigated this many juvenile sex offenses in a year. They agree with Sargent that juvenile sex offenses are probably common everywhere, but they say they may have been underreported until this year.

In Erie, overall juvenile crime is not common. In fact, police say it is on the decline after 39 cases were reported in 2001.

So far this year, nine cases of juvenile crime have been reported. Four of those stem from child-on-child sexual assault investigations.

But the number of child-on-child sex assaults reported recently in Erie is not out of proportion with the number of similar cases that come out of every Boulder County town, according to officials at Blue Sky Bridge. The nonprofit is where many forensic interviews take place when children say they are molested.

"What's out of the ordinary is it's getting a lot of attention," Sargent said.

Not all agree.

"That seems like a high number for that size of a population," said Janet Buss, executive director of the Colorado Springs-based Children's Advocacy Center, a national advocate for abused children.

She said some trends are hard to explain.

"We've seen an increase in juvenile sexual perpetrators across the board," Buss said. "It's really hard to say why that is."

According to the University of Colorado Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, juvenile sex offenses are also being studied more than in the past, and the legal options and clinical resources for juvenile sex offenders have boomed.

In 1980, there was only one program for child offenders. Now, there are about 1,000.

Colorado officials plan to release uniform guidelines for juvenile sex-offender treatment, punishment and probation this summer.

A 2000 University of Virginia study found that juveniles account for up to one-fifth of the rapes and one-half of the cases of child molestation committed in the United States each year.

Local statistics, however, show that juvenile sex offenders are not as prevalent.

Juvenile sex offenders make up less than 2 percent of the 1,800 people supervised by the Boulder County Probation Department.

The department oversees 35 juvenile sex offenders, while 15 other Boulder County children are in the custody of the state Department of Youth Corrections, convicted of sex offenses.

Probation officials say the numbers for convicted juvenile sex offenders change little year-to-year.

Boulder County District Attorney Mary Keenan said juvenile sex crimes involving multiple victims are on the rise in the county, as are other violent juvenile offenses. But limited statistics show that prosecutions for alleged juvenile sex offenses have remained roughly stable, comparing 2001 with 2002.

Statistics from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation show that juvenile arrests on rape allegations declined by almost half in 2000 from 1999, while "other" juvenile sexual offenses increased slightly.

An underreported crime

What is not disputed by both Buss and Sargent, two child and family advocates who deal with sexually abused children, is that sexual assault on children — whether inflicted by juveniles or adults — is more common than most parents might realize.

As many as one out of every four girls and one out of every six boys will be sexually abused before turning 18, according to Blue Sky Bridge. That makes for a large pool of victims nationwide, many of whom never tell of their sexual abuses.

"Sexual assault is probably the most underreported crime, whether it involves children or adults," said Carolyn French, victims advocate at the Boulder County District Attorney's Office. "Because it's so underreported, when the public becomes aware of incidents there is a certain shock.

"There is nothing to make us believe that there is anything particularly concerning about Erie," she said.

The Virginia survey backs that claim. It reported that police say they think that half of juvenile sex offense cases nationwide are not being reported.

Another factor that might contribute to Erie's seemingly high number of suspected juvenile sex offenders is the high number of children in town, police and treatment providers say.

Most of the recent sex crimes in Erie involved children older than 10. Erie saw a 391 percent increase in children ages 10 to 19 — from 195 to 762 — between 1990 and 2000, according to Census data.

A 2000 U.S. Department of Justice report found nearly a quarter of those who sexually abuse juveniles are younger than 18.

Guessing at a cause

Andrea Tran has lived for two years in Orchard Glen, where an 11-year-old boy was arrested in April on suspicion of raping his 8-year-old sister and her 10-year-old girlfriend. Tran has three children, ages 9, 13 and 15.

She keeps the family's computer in the kitchen so she can watch her kids surf the Internet, where thousands of adult Web sites lurk, ready to pop up after a mistyped Web address or a query as innocent as going to cinderella.com., a pornography site.

"The stuff they put on the Internet is just appalling," Tran said.

There is one common thread in each of the Erie cases, police said — pornography. Police accuse all the suspects arrested in Erie of accessing adult Web sites, downloading pornographic pictures or watching X-rated videos.

"These are all kids growing up and they are hitting these points and they are getting those (sexual) feelings and maturing," Erie police Lt. David Brown said. "How they deal with that is the issue."

Brown said he thinks Erie's problems with child-on-child sexual abuse denote a larger U.S. problem. Children are bombarded by sexual messages that they cannot escape, he said.

"It's definitely a different time," Brown said. "Just look at the things they show on regular television. Sex sells. Maybe that has something to do with it. I personally think it does."

Sargent, whose Boulder County child and family center interviewed some of the alleged suspects and victims in Erie, disagreed.

"It is so unlikely that just viewing a pornographic movie could lead to a case of this scale," she said.

While "NYPD Blue" is a far cry from the days of "I Love Lucy," Sargent said: "I don't know that (sex on television) has an effect on sexual abuse, which is very different from consensual activity."

The bottom line is children who initiate abuse most likely themselves were abused, she said, and the younger the offender the more likely that is to be the case.

Erie police say only one child involved in the recent sex-abuse investigations may have been molested before.

Risky sexual behavior has been commonly linked to alcohol or drug use, but police say they suspect drugs were used by only one juvenile they arrested.

Erie investigators also say most of the juveniles arrested for sex crimes in Erie don't fit the profile of a pedophile or chronic offender. They are kids who play street hockey, soccer and video games.

"They're not different from the average kid playing down the street that you see in our neighborhood," Brown said.

Nor are their parents any different. Most of the suspects come from average middle- to upper-class suburban families.

"None of these cases have really been where parents don't know where their children are," Brown said.

Despite experts' assertions that pornography doesn't lead to dangerous sexual experimentation by children, the Rev. Andy McClure of Erie's Mountain Ridge Community Church says parents and guardians are being too lax about what they allow in their homes.

McClure counseled four of the children involved in recent Erie sex crimes. He said some of these kids have been directly or indirectly led astray by an older person who, perhaps unwittingly, provided access to pornography.

No stores sell adult videos or magazines in Erie.

"There's got to be a much older brother, mother, a father, a grandfather — someone who has fueled this issue," McClure said. "Is anyone born with the sensation of running out and getting drunk or buying cigarettes?

"No. Someone introduces them to that."

Contact reporters Justin George at (303) 473-1359 or georgej@thedailycamera.com, and Christine Reid at (303) 473-1355 or reidc@thedailycamera.com.

May 26, 2002

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