Teens urged to talk about sex assaults

A CHILDREN’S charity is urging young people to speak out about sexual assaults as new research showed many teenage girls do not report attacks by boys.

NSPCC, which runs the ChildLine helpline, found fewer than one in five of those abused tells anyone if the offender is a young person under 18.

However, the majority of those abused by an adult tell someone what has happened.

The charity said adolescents are responsible for around a third of all sex offences committed against children, and in three out of four of these cases the victim will know the offender.

But it said teenage girls will often accept abuse as part of a relationship or do not know how to stop it.

It suggested as many as 280,000 young girls in the UK could be affected at some point if the figures were extrapolated out.