“Affair.” “Relationship.” “Love.” “Consensual.”
These are words that are commonly used in news stories where adults commit sexual acts on little kids.
The word “relationship” is too civilized a word to be attached to describing a sex crime perpetrated on a child by an adult. Yet that word is plastered all over news stories (especially recently) when stories hit page one about eleven-year-olds having “consensual” sex with the adult.
How can it be consensual? Pre-teens (and many teens too) don’t always have the judgment to analyze the long-term consequences of their actions. A child may be tricked by an adult that they trust into allowing “bad touch” sorts of things, but that is NOT consent. It’s manipulation by the adult to get the child to stop resisting what they wouldn’t normally do. And it's a crime.
These crimes are sickening, heartbreaking and a sign that we need to be doing more to protect children from predators. These children will have to live with what was done to them by an adult who was pretending to be their friend and was inflicting long-term permanent damage on the child's emotional/psychological growth and development.
"Consensual" my afterburner.
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