Difficulties with age estimation of internet images of south‐east Asian girls

Abstract

Community paediatricians are increasingly asked to provide expert opinion on internet child pornography related to 'sex tourism', mostly in south-east Asian countries. The girls involved are often prepubertal, and the main legal question is to establish whether they are under 13 years of age. This paper provides a review of the literature related to '97.5% of south-east Asian girls will show pubertal changes of B2 stage by the age of 13.7 years' this question. Although there are limited data of age of menarche from the countries at risk of 'sex tourism', one recent study from the Philippines showed that the mean age of menarche was similar to the mean age of British girls born between 1982 and 1986. There are no data in the above countries on the early pubertal changes in breast development, but studies from India and China suggested that these might be more prolonged than for British girls. In particular, the interval between B2 stage (early pubertal breast development) and menarche was nearly 3 years in these developing countries, compared with 2 years for the British girls. Maternal malnutrition and girls small for gestational age at birth resulted in an earlier menarche, while chronic malnutrition, severe enough to cause stunting in preschool years, caused a delay in menarche. Taking into account information from the existing studies, we estimated that 97.5% of south-east Asian girls will show pubertal changes of B2 stage by the age of 13.7 years.

Early Marriage, Age of Menarche, and Female Schooling Attainment in Bangladesh

“…Extensive animal studies from the 1910s and 1920s (see Krogman 1972, 135-37) also show consistently that malnutrition has a far bigger effect on growth in size than on maturational progress. Hence, while it is difficult to extrapolate observed dose responses to human populations, even a conservative interpretation of laboratory results indicates that only malnutrition severe enough to cause stunting during childhood could cause a delay in menarche, consistent with a recent assessment of human populations (Stathopolu, Hulse, and Canning 2003). This fact allows us to assess the degree of endogeneity with data on the height of women in our sample.…”

Juvenile age estimation from facial images

“…In cases involving pornographic images suspected to depict children, it is of great importance to be able to assess if the individual in the image is indeed a child, thus indicating the crime of child sexual abuse (CSA) (3). A more precise age is often required to determine the severity of offender sentencing and may be used in the identification of the victim (4,5). Age evaluations could aid the sequencing of images, when there are several images present which have been taken over a period of time (6).…”

“…Consequently, there has been a rise in the number of cases in which an expert has been called upon to give an age assessment from a photograph of alleged CSA (4,5). Experts may include individuals such as paediatricians, gynaecologists, forensic pathologists or forensic anthropologists (3,4), although this remains a very contentious area with only very recent attempts to provide guidelines for use in age estimation from photographic images (9-11).…”

“…However, studies have shown that age estimation from secondary sexual characteristics is inaccurate, with wide variability in the choice of features believed to be most important in age assessment (8). Growth and sexual maturation can be affected by many factors such as environmental factors, obesity and malnutrition, population differences and even individual biology can influence the rate and timing of sexual maturation (4,5,13). In addition, the assessment of sexual maturation may be confused, as adults may remove features such as pubic and axillary hair in order to appear younger.…”

The Impact of Women's Age at Marriage on Own and Spousal Labor Market Outcomes in India: Causation or Selection?

“…Exposure to severe malnutrition could potentially also a¤ect long term health of the women (for e.g. Stathopolu et al (2003) note that acute malnutrition could result in stunting) and this consequently could a¤ect their labor market prospects. This could undermine our instrument.…”