Report: Police officers sexually abuse children and avoid prison sentences

In Nevada, Missouri, a 16-year-old girl who wanted to be a police officer began riding with police officer Brian Hansen. He eventually pleaded guilty to sexual battery after state investigators accused him of sexually assaulting the teen in his patrol car and at a shooting range. Hansen received probation, not jail time. After a comprehensive investigation by the WashingtonPost makes it clear that the story is not an anomaly. “Over the past two decades, hundreds of police officers in the United States have sexually abused children, while officials at every level of the criminal justice system have failed to protect children, punish abusers, and prevent further crimes,” the story says. The post identified at least 1,800 state and local police officers who were charged with child sexual abuse between 2005 and 2022. Details:

• Three quarters of the victims were teenagers, and the police officers were almost never related. In almost all cases (99%) the police officer was male.
• The cases often correspond to the classic example of grooming: officials in positions of power take advantage of a potentially vulnerable young person.
• About 40% of those convicted did not have to serve a prison sentence. For those convicted, the prison sentence was usually less than 5 years.
• About 66 percent of them had been working in the police force for more than five years and a total of 47 were police chiefs or heads of other authorities.
• “This is happening to communities all over the country, but people don’t notice,” says Phillip M. Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University. “And then police chiefs buy into the black sheep theory and say, ‘There’s nothing to see here, we got rid of that problem when we fired them.'”

(Read the full investigation, which includes first-hand accounts from victims.)