Feds: 12% of youth in custody sexually abused; 2 TYC facilities among worst offenders

In light of the TYC sex abuse scandal a couple of years ago, it's remarkable to see this new survey of youth in custody from the Bureau of Justice Statistics which found that "About 12% of youth in state juvenile facilities and large non-state facilities ... reported experiencing one or more incidents of sexual victimization by another youth or facility staff in the past 12 months."

Of those, "About 2.6% of youth ... reported an incident involving another youth and 10.3% reported an incident involving staff." (Honestly, I'd have expected those numbers to be reversed.) Further, according to the accompanying press release:

Nearly half of the youth victimized by another youth reported they had experienced physical force or threat of force (46 percent), 30 percent had been offered favors or protection, and 17 percent had been given drugs or alcohol. Among youth victimized by facility staff, more than two-thirds (69 percent) did not report any force, threat of force, or offers of favors, protection, drugs, or alcohol to engage in the sexual activity. Nearly 20 percent of youth sexually victimized by another youth reported being injured in the incident, compared to five percent of youth victimized by staff.

The survey also found gender-based differences in sexual abuse reports. "Males were more likely than females to report sexual activity with facility staff (10.8 percent compared to 4.7 percent), but less likely than females to report forced sexual activity with another youth (2.0 percent compared to 9.1 percent)."

Even assuming there are some false accusations in the mix, those are pretty startling data.

MORE: Two Texas Youth Commission facilities - Corsicana and Victory Field - reported among the highest rates of sexual abuse of all secure juvenile facilities: respectively, 23.7 and 24.6 percent of youth at those facilities claimed to have engaged in sexual contact with facility staff, while 13.7 percent of youth at Corsicana said they'd been sexually victimized by other youth in the past 12 months. See Table 5 on page 8 of the pdf.

Also, "Approximately 95% of all youth reporting staff sexual misconduct said they had been victimized by female staff. In 2008, 42% of staff in state juvenile facilities were female."

It should be noted that, under the law, any sexual contact between youth and staff is considered per se abuse, even if the youth consented or sought out the contact. However, 8.9% of youth at Corsicana and 11.7% at Victory Field reported that staff sexual misconduct involved use of force (Table 6).

AND MORE: See initial coverage from the Texas Tribune and from AP. Here's an excellent post from the New York Review of Books Blog.