In seeking to ascertain whether immorality among children and
adolescents has increased or is increasing it should be pointed out that
there are not any statistics available either in New Zealand or
elsewhere from which reliable guidance may be obtained. Sexual
immorality is, by its very nature, a clandestine vice. Any available
figures can comprise only such things as detected offences against the
law, or registration of ex-nuptial births, or births which have
resulted from pre-marital intercourse. Figures are not available
concerning immoral acts which do not become the subject of a criminal
charge.

Charges of unlawful carnal knowledge or indecent assault arise, for the
most part, from complaints made by females. From feelings of chivalry or
other reasons it is not in the nature of the male to inform on the
female. The common experience is that a charge of sexual impropriety
comes from information supplied by the female. So long as a girl is
prepared to be silent, the offenders remain unknown. As with older
people, so also with children.

Whether sexual laxity has been increasing must be a matter largely of
impression based, perhaps, upon inference from certain known facts. On
this matter there is room for a wide divergence of opinion. If
policemen, teachers, or social workers in the Hutt district had been
asked in June of 1954 whether immorality had increased there, they would
probably have replied that the wave of 1952 had receded and matters were
back to normal. Yet a month later that district had achieved an
unenviable, and even unfair, reputation in this respect.

Sad to relate, the cases in respect of which the police took action in
the Hutt do not represent the full extent of known sexual immorality