The profile of age in cases of victims of sexual offence.

ABSTRACT

Sexual assault on female subjects is a global health & human right issue. The problem has legal as well health related bearing. Female victims, often young girls are the worst sufferers of crime like rape, kidnapping and trafficking etc... To prove this type of crime, age estimation is most important. The ages of relevance to criminal liability ranges between 14 and 18 years in most countries. In the present study 141 cases were studied for age estimation in cases of victims of sexual assault cases at Dept. of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, Govt. Medical College, Surat. In accordance with the updated recommendations for age estimation, a physical examination with determination of anthropometric measures, inspection of signs of sexual maturation, dental examination and X- ray examination were carried out. Surprisingly we found that appearance and fusion of ossification centers and 3rd molar eruption were occurred in few cases at earlier age as contrary to that mentioned in standard literatures.