the number of actual prepubescent kids molested by actual paedophiles each year in the UK appears to be in single figures.
That figure seems several orders of magnitude too small.
For example, RAINN claims “child protective services substantiated or found strong evidence that 63,000 children a year were sexually abused” in the US, and this is significantly less than their estimates based on victimization surveys. They also mention 34% of victims are under 12, which seems more or less the same as “prepubescent” so 63,000/3 = 21,000 prepubescent children. Divide by 5 to account for the difference in population size and you get around 4200 cases in the UK each year.
Another sanity check is to compare it with the murder rate. In the UK, around 700 people get murdered each year. It seems implausible that people are ~100x more likely to be murdered than sexually molested as children. If anything I'd guess the latter is significantly more common than the former.
So in all likelyhood, pedophiles molest hundreds or thousands of prepubescent children a year in the UK, not single digit numbers.
The extent to which the RAINN stats support your view is that despite being only 1/3 of minors, those 12+ are 2/3 of victims. And while the gender ratio is fairly even under 12, girls outnumber boys 4 to 1 among those over 12. So that suggests that indeed female puberty is a big risk factor, but it only explains roughly 50% of the victimization of children under 18.
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That figure seems several orders of magnitude too small.
For example, RAINN claims “child protective services substantiated or found strong evidence that 63,000 children a year were sexually abused” in the US, and this is significantly less than their estimates based on victimization surveys. They also mention 34% of victims are under 12, which seems more or less the same as “prepubescent” so 63,000/3 = 21,000 prepubescent children. Divide by 5 to account for the difference in population size and you get around 4200 cases in the UK each year.
Another sanity check is to compare it with the murder rate. In the UK, around 700 people get murdered each year. It seems implausible that people are ~100x more likely to be murdered than sexually molested as children. If anything I'd guess the latter is significantly more common than the former.
So in all likelyhood, pedophiles molest hundreds or thousands of prepubescent children a year in the UK, not single digit numbers.
The extent to which the RAINN stats support your view is that despite being only 1/3 of minors, those 12+ are 2/3 of victims. And while the gender ratio is fairly even under 12, girls outnumber boys 4 to 1 among those over 12. So that suggests that indeed female puberty is a big risk factor, but it only explains roughly 50% of the victimization of children under 18.
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