by Rod Hughes

Every year, authorities send 700 adolescent sex offenders to the National Children’s Hospital Adolescent Clinic for counseling and, hopefully, behavioral modification. Now, the Social Security Administration (Caja) confesses that the clinic does not have enough staff to perform the service.

The infractors, minors who sexually prey on other minors, can under law avoid correctional incarceration by receiving treatment. In the year 2000 the Caja opened a special sexual offender unit in the Adolescent Clinic, a bold, humane move but one that did not anticipate the demand for the service. Since the unit opened it has treated 270 teenagers but the courts are referring nearly three times that number per year.

The cash-strapped Caja is between a rock and a hard place. In August, 2006, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court ordered that the clinic treat all offenders the courts sent it and repeated the order this Nov. 14. But this kind of treatment is not like setting a broken bone and sending the patient home. It is longterm, intensive and time-consuming.

But now, a special commission appointed to study the problem has come up with a unique solution: Adolescent sexual aggressors will be treated in regional Caja medical facilities. As project coodinator Gerardo Arias notes, this will require some special training—doctors are usually involved in treating the victims of aggression, not the perpetrators.