I was waiting outside a local pub for my friends a few years ago, when I got flashed at and verbally abused by a traveller child, he can't have been older than 11-12 at the most, he was very young. I was so shocked that I couldn't even reply, it made me want to cry to be honest. Not at what he'd done ("do you want to come over here and get ducked", whilst holding his pen in his hand) but the fact that he was a young kid, only a year or two older than my son.
I live close to a large traveller camp, I've met several of the female residents, we go to see their horses and feed them (under strict instructions of what we should and shouldn't give them) but the lads are well known to be sex pests, and all local girls have always known to give them a very wide berth. As soon as I heard about these young boys being travellers, I knew that they were guilty, and that they were probably old hands at this type of offense. Some travellers seem to expose their children to sex at a very young age, I'm not saying that they abuse their kids, but they're not protecting them either. It's a tragedy that no-one is brave enough to ask what is going on within these families.