strative Action 67
(3) Parental Example 68

XIX. Appreciation 68

Appendix A: Table of Sexual Offences for Which
Proceedings Were Taken in New Zealand 69

Appendix B: List of Witnesses, Submissions, and
Order of Appearance 70

_I. Preliminary Observations_

=(1) Sensational Press Reports=

In the second week of July 1954 various newspapers throughout the
Dominion featured reports of proceedings in the Magistrate's Court at
Lower Hutt against youths charged with indecent assault upon, or carnal
knowledge of, girls under 16 years of age.

The prosecuting officer was reported as saying that:

The police investigations revealed a shocking degree of immoral
conduct which spread into sexual orgies perpetrated in several
private homes during the absence of parents, and in several
second rate Hutt Valley theatres, where familiarity between
youths and girls was rife and commonplace.

He also stated that:

... in many cases the children came from excellent homes.

A few weeks previously reports had appeared in the press of statements
made by a Child Welfare Officer and a Stipendiary Magistrate that
juvenile delinquency (meaning delinquency in general and not only sexual
delinquency) had more than doubled in recent years, and that in many
cases the offenders came from:

... materially good homes where they are well provided for.

Such statements naturally provoked a good deal of private and public
comment throughout the Dominion. The anxiety of parents deepened, and
one leading newspaper asserted editorially that:

It is probably quite safe to assert that nothing that has
occurred in the Dominion for a long time has caused so much
public dismay and so much private worry as the disclosure of
moral delinquency among children and adolescents.

There is room for difference of opinion as to whether or not the ensuing
public discussion of sexual offending was desirable. On the one hand it
provoked many conversations on the subject between children themselves
and a noticeable desire to purchase newspapers on the way to and from
school. On the other hand the focusing of attention on the existence of
the peril to school children caused many parents, temporarily at any
rate, to take a greater i