By the Numbers:
A Statistical Portrait of Sex Offenses

Continued from page three

Perception: Most victims of sexual assaults are children.

Facts: Children are victims in approximately two-thirds of all sex crimes every year. However, most assaults against children involve fondling. There are relatively few child rape victims.

Police records in 2004 from Vermont show that 66 percent of all sex crime victims were under the age of 18, with almost 34 percent younger than 13. In New Hampshire, 71 percent were younger than 18 years old and almost 40 percent under 13.

But the proportion of young victims varies widely depending on the type of sex crime. For victims 17 and under, fondling was by far the most common offense in both states. Combined figures from New Hampshire and Vermont show that fondling makes up 63 percent of all cases for the youngest victims, while rape accounted for a quarter of the crimes.

For victims 18 and older, rape accounted for 61 percent of all sex crimes in the two states, while fondling cases were almost 29 percent of the total.

Page five: Are most sex offenders male and victims female?