When Kids Abuse Kids

It's horrifying, but we're hearing about it a lot these days: children molesting, even raping other children.

In Minnesota, seven boys ranging in age from 6 to 13 are accused of raping the 8-year-old sister of one of the boys. On Wednesday, police told CBS News that they have now arrested the three oldest boys and charged them with felony rape.

Authorities in Indiana report a similar crime: three boys under 10 allegedly molested a 4-year-old girl dozens of times.

Robin Goodman, a child psychologist at the New York University Child Study Center, spoke with CBS This Morning Co-Anchor Mark McEwen about how things like this can happen.

Statistics about child sex abuse are hard to come by, says Goodman, partly because many of the incidents are kept secret. But she says, "There may be as many as 150,000 to 200,000 cases of child sex abuse per year."

Do these kids know what they're doing?

"These cases are a little difficult because what you have is a combination of a sex crime and a group crime. And sometimes those are different things," says Goodman.

"Kids may understand sexuality, they understand differences in terms of physical differences in children. They understand where babies come from. In terms of what the sex act is and the consequences, there is a big range in terms of what a 6 or 7-year-old understands and what a 10-year-old understands."

Goodman says kids today are no doubt influenced by all the sex and violence they see on television. "When growing up, we didn't see the kinds of things you see on TV, that you see on soap operas or movies. It's hard to protect kids. But parents need to do that.

"They also need to understand the difference between what's a real mental health problem in a child, whether it's a beginning sexual deviancy or a conduct disorder, and what's a case of needing more parental supervision."

What happens to the kids who are involved in these crimes? What sort of counseling do they receive?

"It's very important for the child that has been abused to get help," says Goodman, "because there is life-long potential for feeling guilty, feeling that it was your fault, and having really distrustful and difficult relationships."

[For more information related to this story, see Helping Boys Shed Aggression.]