In the past three years Tayside Police have charged 180 people with sexual offences allegedly committed while they were children in some cases as young as eight.
The figures include underage offenders but also adults whose criminal sexual behaviour happened before they were 16 and has only just come to light.
According to statistics released by the force in response to a freedom of information request, it charged 85 people with underage sex offences in 2008, 41 in 2009 and 54 in 2010.
The cases include four alleged rapes in 2008 and two in each of the following years, as well as 54 accusations of indecent assault over the three years.
In 2008, 21 people were named as being responsible for more than one offence while under the age of 16, with 16 offences attributed to one individual. The following year, six people were charged more than once and nine were in the same position in 2010.
Tayside Police warned the figures should be approached with caution, explaining: “In accordance with the Scottish Crime Recording Standard, it is often the case that several crime reports are raised in respect of what a lay person might class as a single incident.
“Every act identified during the course of an investigation which would, alone, constitute a sexual crime will be counted separately. With only a few exceptions, all of the instances referred to where the same individual was accused more than once could be classed as linked crimes in relation to a single incident … I would advise you that the highest number of detected crimes relating to what a lay person might determine as entirely separate incidents would be two in each year.”
The force was unable to identify the age of the youngest person charged with a sex offence.
“It is very common for sexual crimes in particular to be reported some time after the offences actually took place, in some cases many years,” the spokesman said. “Due to the passage of time it is often extremely difficult for victims to identify exactly when the offence happened.
“Also, in some cases, individuals may have been the victims of sexual crime over a period of some years, and in such cases, the ‘committed from and to’ dates will cover the time span described by the victim.
“In these cases, the age of the accused at the ‘committed from’ date is recorded, ie the age they were at when the offending behaviour is believed to have started. As such it is not always possible to obtain an actual definitive age of the accused at the time of the offence.”
The force was only able to identify four cases over the past three years where they could provide a firm age for the accused at the time of the offence two 10-year-olds charged with indecent assault and public indecency and two eight-year-olds charged with lewd and libidinous practices.
The spokesman said this may not be accurate and was purely for assistance.