The conclusion of the Committee is that the above pattern of immorality is of a kind which was not previously manifest in New Zealand.  It cannot be dealt with on the footing that it has always been with us.  The attitude of mind shown by those who have planned and organized sexual parties, and sometimes caught others within their net, is something which demands serious consideration.  The subject cannot be dismissed in the light, airy way of those people who, without any adequate knowledge of the facts, have been saying that there is nothing new about the sexual misbehaviour of young people and that nothing can be done to improve matters.  The situation is a serious one, and something must be done.

VI.  Searching for the Cause

Many have been the views expressed as to the reasons for this immorality and the suggested remedies.  After considering the evidence, after reading much literature on the subject, and weighing up all the suggested factors, the view of the Committee is that the matter is not capable of simplification by regarding any, or even all, the causes suggested and discussed below as being the main cause.  In seeking to remedy the evil it must steadily be borne in mind that we have not only to deal with the immediately apparent causes.  Letters to the press, letters to this Committee, and many of the submissions made reveal a failure to dig below the surface or to look beyond the factors which came immediately to the mind of the writers or those which, from personal experience, appeared to them to be the decisive or motivating factors.

The way in which the Committee approached a consideration of this problem was to distinguish between those causes which appeared to be the precipitating causes and those which it regarded as predisposing causes.  The precipitating causes are those which are closely related in time or circumstance to the actual misbehaviour.  The predisposing causes are those which create an emotional maladjustment in a person and thus induce a susceptibility to the precipitating cause.  For instance, a semi-nude figure or a song with a double meaning will not incite a properly instructed adolescent to sexual misconduct.  But if by parental neglect or failure to control a young person is predisposed to anti-social conduct, there is danger in any form of suggestiveness.

The Committee has carefully considered many suggested causes (whether precipitating or predisposing) and now sets out its views on those which merit special mention.

If, as the Committee believes, immoral behaviour should be regarded as a phase or facet of juvenile delinquency, the same influences which tend to incite other anti-social behaviour are in operation here.

Much has been written in textbooks, in journals, and in various scattered articles about the causes of juvenile delinquency.  What applies in other communities, and in other aspects of juvenile delinquency, must apply with much the same force in this Dominion as elsewhere, and to the sexual deviant as to all other juvenile delinquents.  In searching for the real or substantive cause it must be borne in mind that juvenile delinquency, of the type now being considered, is a new feature of modern life and a facet of juvenile delinquency which does not appear to have engaged the attention of research workers.