You read news like this and don’t know where to begin to understand it, or even explain it:

Three boys ages 8 and 9 were being held Monday in a detention center on charges of kidnapping and raping an 11-year-old girl in the woods near a suburban Atlanta apartment complex, officials said.

The alleged attack happened Thursday and the girl’s mother reported it to authorities Sunday, Acworth police Capt. Wayne Dennard said.

The girl said the boys lured her into the woods behind her Acworth apartment complex, reports Rebekka Schramm of CBS affiliate WGCL-TV in Atlanta.

“And they said, let me see your breasts and I said no,” the girl told Schramm. “And they said you better do it. And they had this kind of like a rope thing and he was hitting me with it and it hurt really bad.”

The girl said the little boys raped her against her will.

“I feel very mad what they did to me, because I wish they didn’t do this to me,” the girl said.

The three boys were charged with rape, kidnapping, false imprisonment and sexual assault, Dennard said. Their names were being withheld because of their age.

Prosecutors have not decided whether to try the suspects as adults.

“They do need to be taught a lesson because if they do it to her, they could do it to somebody else,” the girl’s mother said. “And who knows when they become teenagers what they can do to other girls.”

The father of one of the boys said his son is being accused of luring the girl into the woods.

“He’s only 45 inches, 40 pounds in the third grade,” the boy’s father said. “This girl’s in the fifth grade, she’s 11 years old, 2 foot taller than him. How can my boy with a broken wrist be accused of any kidnapping charge?”

The boy’s father said he believes she made up the story to cover up her promiscuity.

“She’s trying to cover her own butt by getting everyone else in more serious trouble,” the boy’s father said. “I guess we’re just going to have to see how this is going to unfold.”

Meantime, there was this study a few months ago that may put this story in context:

Courts have seen the number of sex offense cases involving juvenile offenders rise dramatically in recent years, an Associated Press review of national statistics found, and treatment professionals say the offenders are getting younger and the crimes more violent.

Some psychologists blame the increase in numbers — 40 percent over two decades — on a society saturated with sex and violence and the fact that many of the accused were themselves victims of adult sexual predators. Others say there aren’t more children committing such crimes, simply more awareness, better reporting and a general hysteria about sex offenders.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to suggest we have whole schools full of sexual predators … but we’re seeing more of it and more sexually aggressive acts,” said Scott Poland, past president of the National Association of School Psychologists. “How do these kids even know about this? It’s permeated throughout our society.”

Robert Prentky, a psychologist and nationally renowned expert on sex offenders in Bridgewater, Mass., thinks the statistics are misleading.

“There aren’t more kids, there are more laws,” he said. “We now have fairly draconian laws with very harsh sanctions that apply to juveniles.”

The number of children under 18 accused of forcible rape, violent and nonviolent sex offenses rose from 24,100 in 1985 to 33,800 in 2004, the AP’s analysis found. Violent offenses include attempted rape and sexual assault, while nonviolent offenses including fondling, statutory rape and prostitution.

By comparison, rape and sexual assaults by adults decreased more than 56 percent from 1993 to 2004. Comparable statistics were unavailable before 1993.