Society's ancient bugbear, the dirty old man who preys on the innocent, is

IN a recent episode of a long-running TVB drama series, an actor kisses a woman passionately in a car park. He caresses her thigh and slips his hand under her mini-skirt. She makes a suggestive comment to him. It was 10.30 on a Thursday night. Is your average five-year-old child still up and watching television? 'When we were children, there was no mention of sex in the media. We never touched any pornography,' says veteran actress Josephine Siao Fong-fong, who has a Master's degree in psychology and chairs the End Child Sexual Abuse Foundation in Hong Kong.

'In today's culture, adults talk about sex, the child hears it every day, thinks about it and is drawn to it as a game. Sex is so hyped-up it is totally out of proportion to our daily life.' She admits children are curious about sex in their growing years. 'A four-year-old may want to look and touch the private parts of the opposite sex. We don't call that sexual abuse, but after some sexual stimulation, like watching pornographic tapes, children might imitate grown-ups,' Ms Siao says.

And that is where a new problem is emerging. The stereotype of a sex offender is a lewd, older male, but children as young as five are committing sexual abuse. In the first nine months of this year, Against Child Abuse (ACA) recorded 77 cases of child sex abuse. Among the perpetrators, 10 were below 14 and three were between five and nine years old.

In a 1991 study of 18,000 youngsters between the ages of 11 and 18 in the United States, 9.5 per cent of them admitted they had been sexually abused, of which Out of that 9.5 per cent, eight per cent said their perpetrators were below 13.

'Americans have long been aware that not only adults but also children can be sex abusers. Sadly Hong Kong is short of studies like this,' clinical psychologist Ellen Ma Yee-man says. According to ACA, most offenders are family members: a father, mother or brother. There are also nannies, neighbours or tutors. Some victims were abused by friends, who started off making it seem like a game. In one case an 11-year-old boy had intercourse with a six-year-old girl.

Sex on the Internet, television and magazines is so easily accessible it is not surprising it dominates the thoughts of today's increasingly precocious children, according to child experts. 'At the first stage, a group of children below 10 may be playing doctor and patient while their parents are out. They take off their clothes and touch each other. Such games may lead to a one-to-one encounter in the next stage,' ACA director Priscilla Lui Tsang Sun-ka says.