Kids Abuse Other Kids More Often Than Adults Do: What That Means for Your Policy
Bullying Prevention Month is an occasion to talk about kindness. It is also a reminder to check your negligent supervision exposure, because the numbers are not close. A 2022 analysis of English and Welsh police data found that 52% of child sexual abuse and exploitation cases involved another child as the offender, most commonly age 14. A separate national U.S. survey found that minors committed more than 70% of reported child sexual assaults. Most child protection policies still treat “the predator” as an adult stranger or staff member. The more common threat is another child.
The Problem: We Screen for the Wrong Perpetrator
Most youth-serving organizations pour their prevention energy into background checks, interview red flags, and staff training on adult grooming behavior. All of those policies matter. But you need to include more. Your supervision plan, incident-reporting habits, and investigation protocols need to treat peer conduct with the same seriousness.
The Principle: Notice of a Pattern Creates Liability
The CDC’s uniform definition guides prevention curriculum: unwanted aggressive behavior, a power imbalance, and repetition. Courts apply a narrower test for negligent supervision liability, specifically whether organizations had notice of the risk of harm. Plaintiffs can establish that notice through either of two kinds of evidence: prior similar acts by the specific perpetrator, or prior similar harm to others generally.
A 2024 ruling from a New York appellate court illustrates the principle. A student choked a classmate without warning during what staff had observed as ordinary horseplay. The school had no disciplinary history on the student who did it. The court held that a school is liable for one student’s harm to another only when the conduct “could reasonably have been anticipated,” based on actual or constructive notice of similar prior conduct. The court affirmed dismissal.
A 2018 ruling from a different New York appellate court applied the same standard to different facts. That student had a documented history of prior altercations with classmates. The court found that history created a real question for a jury and denied summary judgment, letting the claim proceed toward trial.
Most courts look for prior notice of the risk of abuse. Two Georgia appellate cases, for example, applied that principle to reach different decisions based on the facts of the two cases. A 1993 Georgia appellate ruling illustrates the general-harm evidence. A five-year-old at a day camp wandered outside unsupervised, and an unknown assailant abducted and assaulted her. The court found a jury question on foreseeability without any prior incident tied to a specific perpetrator: general knowledge that young children wander off was itself evidence of notice. A 2013 Georgia appellate ruling shows the same standard failing for lack of either kind of evidence. There, an older child sexually assaulted a younger child under staff supervision, and the court found nothing tied to that specific child and nothing showing prior assaults at that location.
The Application: What to Track
The bullying-versus-conflict distinction shapes how you respond pedagogically. Your legal exposure depends whether a claimant can show notice of a pattern for that specific child.
Track patterns, not incident labels. Every peer incident report should go into the same file, regardless of whether anyone calls it bullying, roughhousing, or a one-time argument. A student with three “isolated” incidents on record has a pattern.
Train your staff and volunteers to report everything, not just what feels serious in the moment. The cases above show you can lose when a pattern existed and nobody connected the dots until a lawsuit did it for them.
One caution: negligent supervision standards vary by state. This post covers common themes, not every jurisdiction’s specific rule. Some states weigh constructive notice differently, and a few layer distinct statutory frameworks on top of the common-law standard. Check your own state’s law, or ask counsel, before you rely on this as your full legal picture.
Review your incident-reporting system this month. If a staff member has to decide whether something “counts” before they write it down, you have a gap that a plaintiff’s attorney will find before you do.
Want to go deeper? Our on-demand course, Bullying vs Ordinary Conflict, covers how to tell the difference operationally and why the distinction matters for your response, even though it is not what determines your legal exposure.
