HIGH-RISK SEXUAL behaviour among young teenagers is again causing concern for health and education officials, especially as new crazes such as 'sexting' and voyeurism catch hold in the student population. aided by hi-tech phones which can record and transmit high resolution images become increasingly available to experimenting teens.

Yesterday, a number of photos with young teenagers indulging in 'outercourse' and heavy petting in a classroom, presumably after school hours, emerged on the Internet. One876 is not sure
which high school the children attend.

However, this case underlines the gravity of the task facing health and education officials as they grapple with the conundrum of protecting young adults from sexually transmitted infections, teenage pregnancy, sexual predators and ironically, themselves.

Anecdotal accounts of the sexual adventures of teens on tinted-glass buses and affairs with taxi-men are common, and disturbing case with reports that students from a prominent high school in Kingston were caught by a security guard engaging in oral sex in a fast food restaurant in downtown Kingston.

Last year, the Hunts Bay Police apprehended 14 students, seven males and seven females at the Caymanas River in St. Catherine after a parent came to them for help to find her daughter who was missing from school. The frequent Ananda alerts sent out by the CCN is a symptom of rampaging teens with their hormones in overdrive.

"We have had reports that schoolgirls between the ages of 12 and 16 years old have been going to the Caymanas River to hang out with older men. This remains a problem, but we have increased street patrols in the area of malls in towns, and when we see children loitering at bus stops, we ask them for their names, their parents are notified, and we send them or take them home," an officer at the Centre for Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA), said.

The CISOCA has been attempting to educate people about sexual offences and child abuse through the electronic media and other forums. Sociologists believe that today's teens are merely mirror images of a society in decay.

"The children are caught in a crossfire...sex on the school buses, sex in public places...this is just a manifestation of a larger problem," said Dr. Claudette Crawford-Brown, of the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of the West Indies, said. "Right now, I know a 40-year-old bus conductor who is living with a 12-year-old girl. He has taken her out of school and she lives with him now. This is part and parcel of what is happening with the society, this young girl was raped by someone, and in trying to get a modicum of sanity for herself has landed in the cl**tches of this man who uses her as a sexual slave."

Dr. Brown said that she has already alerted the authorities to that particular problem.

REVOLUTION 
"There is a revolution in the values of the society, and kids are caught up in it. The change is too rapid, never before in the history of the Jamaican society has there been such a great change in mores, ethics and values in so short a time. There is no respect for anyone else, sexual gratification is the order of the day, and men and young girls believe that anything goes," Dr. Crawford-Brown said.

This sort of 'anything-goes' attitude translates into several reported cases of sexual offences since January. Last year, there was a decline in all major crimes, except rape and murder. 
Doreen Lawe-Soutar, administrator of the Carberry Courts Special School, is concerned about the sexual molestation of the school's mentally challenged charges by unscrupulous men in Papine.

"Sometimes, our female students end up going to places with adult males who should know better. Last year, two of our girls did not go home, because men took them away and had sex with them. We had to track them down, and the men were charged," she said. 
Mrs. Lawe-Soutar admitted to a reporter that the "sexualised images and music in society have been affecting the behaviour" of her young charges.

FONDLING 
"There is a lot of fondling of girls by their peers, and kisses, but no actual penetration. We have to make sure we supervise them at play, and in the classrooms at all times, but we have had reports of the young girls, who are sometimes physically well-developed for their ages, being fondled by men, so we try to make sure they don't lurk around the bus stop in Papine," Mrs. Lawe-Soutar said.

Fast food establishments in busy commercial areas, such as Mother's in the York Plaza, are complaining bitterly about the packs of unsupervised schoolchildren who descend on the establishments to idle for hours.

"In the evenings they are here until late, 6:00 p.m. maybe 6:30 p.m. and most of them hang out with their boyfriends. They have a special corner and when you look across at them, you see females with their legs over the boys, some sitting in the boys' laps...that's how they behave. Sometimes a customer may be bold enough to go over and talk to them, and tell them that it doesn't look good with them in their uniforms," a female supervisor at the Mother's York Plaza store said. "Some girls will wait on the outside for their special buses and after it comes, they leave. It is the ones who come inside we have problems with."

VOID 
A high-ranking official at Youth.now attributes the adventurous sexual behaviour of today's teens to a yawning parental void in the society.

"People give children cell phones so they can parent from a distance and, sometimes, they have no idea where the children are calling from, and what they are doing. As parents, we have not kept up well with the technological changes, and although every generation has its own set of problems, we are not doing enough to evolve to meet the new changes, and our children are paying the price," one peer counsellor opined.

A major part of the problem remains: how can truants and at-risk children be detected, and unsupervised children be monitored after school hours?

"We no longer have truancy officers but, probably, we need to have them, we need to go back to compulsory school attendance. Perhaps the guidance counsellors need to be on top of the situation, but then again, my generation did not have these conductors, loud, vulgar music and cell phones, and the other challenges, something should be done," an official in the Ministry of Education, said.