1 in 10 Young People Have Been Sexually Violent: National Research Out of San Clemente

Nearly one in 10 young people has been a perpetrator of sexual violence, according to national research out of San Clemente.

The non-profit Center for Innovative Public Health Research collected the data that was published online Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

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The results are based on answers the center collected in 2010-11 from 1,058 people ages 14-21; 53 percent were 18-21 at the time and 47 percent were 14-17.

Sexual violence–coercing or forcing some type of sexual contact upon another–“can be perpetrated by anybody: a dating partner, a friend or somebody you don't know,” states Michele Ybarra, the center's president and director of research. “We asked perpetrators about their relationship with their most recent victims, and one in four said it was not a dating partner.”

Previous research focused solely on dating partners or college-age individuals who do not require parental consent, according to Ybarra. His center's research goes further still by suggesting a link between perps and how much contact they've had with violent and X-rated material. Of the 9 percent who reported being perpetrators, 17 percent had looked at such material within the past year. Only 3 percent of the reported non-perpetrators did the same.

Other key findings about the perps:

* 8 percent kissed, touched or made someone else do something sexual knowing the other person didn't want to;
* 3 percent got someone to have sex when they knew the other person didn't want to;
* 3 percent attempted forced sex (attempted rape);
* 2 percent forced someone to have sex (completed rape);
* 16 was the most common age for someone to first coerce or force sex;
* Those who did so when they were 15 or younger were overwhelmingly male.

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