SINCE THE EARLY 1970s, an explosion of research has revealed that teenagers are at special risk for rape. Study after study indicates that adolescents have the highest rates of rape victimization of any age group, and supports the conclusion of the National Victim Center and the Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center that rape is essentially "a tragedy of youth."1 According to the U.S. Department of Justice's 1999 National Crime Victimization Survey, girls between the ages of sixteen and nineteen are raped or sexually assaulted at thirty-five times the rate of older women.

The Justice Department's National Violence Against Women Survey found that more than half of female rape victims were younger than age eighteen when they experienced their first attempted or completed rape, and the FBI estimates that one in three girls is a victim...