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-UE
The stuff you can read in kids' school essays
Well, my mother is an English teacher, and this morning she had called me to come and read something. Namely, her students were supposed to do an essay with the subject "If I met him/her again, I would have so much to tell him/her", where they were meant to write about an old friend whom they haven't seen in a long time, for whatever reason.
Well, this 14-year old girl wrote about her relationship with some guy from another town, whom she had met over the internet. She travelled to his town, where they spent ten days together, but since then he's been unable to meet with her more often than once a month.
Which would all be okay if she hadn't wrote that "there is a big age difference, which she doesn't care about" and that "he keeps repeating to her how much he loves his wife and doesn't want to leave her, but that talk is annoying her, he wants him only for herself, he is her entire world, he's like a dad to her" etc.
I just...
Comments
Obviously the authorities were contacted, right?
You know what's the oddest thing? The girl didn't sign the paper - either she forgot or realized that it could cause a fuss in the last moment.
Mom has said that she'll see what she can do after she finds out who wrote it, though.
Can't be too hard to do so, right?
I hate to piss in anyone's soup, but here I am. Pissing in soup.
This kind of thing is probably much more common than it's given credit for. Which doesn't at all justify it, but sexual relationships where one participant is much younger than the other can still be very commonplace, even in the first world. The nineties, apparently, were pretty big on it. Obviously, some significant things have changed since the nineties (especially the slow removal of the concept that a relationship is inherently male-dominated, which implicitly justifies this kind of thing by infantilising grown women), but you never know.
A major issue is the willingness of the younger participants, in many cases. I've seen a fair few underage girls go after men over the age of consent, including a case or two aimed at me. When I think back to my own teenage years at less than 18, I remember how I would have been entirely willing to engage in a relationship with and sleep with someone over 18. I would have kept my mouth shut about it, too. Again, this doesn't make anything right, but it's simple fact that the complicity of underage individuals provides a significant obstacle.
I think policy can only go so far on this one -- the rest comes down to individual responsibility.
^^ No one was saying this isn't common. But this girl has outright given Ironweaver's mom something concrete to look into in this case. What's more, this means there's a child predator out there with some sort of trail behind him, who can hypothetically be found and prevented from further harming underage girls like this. I get that correcting a societal phenomenon is hard, but here's a case where something can be done. I don't know exactly how a body of authority might go about getting information from the girl, and sure, she might defend this guy, but I'm not seeing why it should be allowed to continue or be glossed over, or left to the "individual responsibility" of a minor when there's clearly a problem here.
From what I can tell, the only actual crime being committed by Serbian law would be infidelity, due to the fact that the AoC is 14, unless the guy in question is in a position of power over her. Is it still creepy as hell? Yes, it is. Is it illegal? No.
I clicked on this thread thinking it would be funny stuff in essays instead of mortifying ones.
Can your mom ID the handwriting? In a reasonable sized class you can usually narrow it down to a couple.
I bet 20 internets that the married guy sappily romanticizes the relationship to the same degree as the girl. Had an economics teacher once who also had a similar side order to his marriage: victim later said she got over the initial crush because she found him too childish(she was 15 or 16 at the time, I'd guess). The sadsack got kicked out of two other schools afterwards before he actually lost his license.
Just because you're dealing with the arrested manchild variety doesn't make it any healthier, but I've rarely seen anyone make a fuss about it other than teasing and berating on this side of the pond(anecdotal evidence of couples: 15-20/16-22/15-21). Local age of consent is 16, for reference purposes.
Actually, the minors between the ages of 14 and 16 make up a specially protected group, where the legality of sexual relationships between them and adults is determined on a case-to-case basis (the age difference has to be small enough).
And infidelity is not a crime in Serbia. I don't think it has ever been ever since the liberation from the Ottomans, actually.
She definitely will be able to when she distributes the tests - it'll be easy to pick the odd one out.
Yeah, I know of a lot of such relationships. I think that they're a bit on the skeevy side - either way, it's a very gray area, but I got the impression that this guy is a lot older, in his thirties at least.
I meant the individual responsibility of the older participant, not the minor, since they have more power. Having laws and procedures that protect minors from this kind of thing is important, but those things are difficult to enforce. It's a particularly difficult issue.
That's not an appropriate response to anything on this forum, and neither is dogmatic moralism -- not that I see what you're upset about, because I wasn't at all supporting the abuse of minors in any way, shape or form. But this is an issue far more complex than bad people doing bad things, because the victims don't often see themselves as victims -- in fact, they see them selves as beneficiaries.
Ah. But I stand by the rest of my post (well, as much as possible when considering that this might not technically be illegal by Serbian law, and therefore might not be actionable). From what you know (since you probably know more about these things than I do), is the difficulty in preventing these relationships more a matter of the authorities discovering that one exists, or in tracking the person down and keeping the victim out of the older person's grasp? If it's the former, then I would call your first post irrelevant since there's some concrete information in this incident, but if it's the latter, I suppose I could see how that would make it difficult to find this guy, or any other predator.
And yeah, I've got a lot of things to say to you that I can't right this moment because I'm posting from a phone. Keep an eye out for it!
^^ Oh, I'm not saying nothing ought to be done. At all. But it's a wider issue, too, and usually there isn't a such a conclusive piece of evidence such as this.
The biggest issue is finding out this kind of thing exists in the first place, because a minor who willfully goes along with this kind of thing won't let it slip to other authority figures in their lives. From their perspective, they have exactly what they want -- consistent companionship and sexual activity, with no responsibilities to take care of on their part. And the older participant likewise has few responsibilities, but a lot of power in the relationship. It's symbiotic and self-reinforcing, and even if it's found out, the law requires conclusive evidence within reason in order to issue a conviction.
I don't really know what can be done about it, but I suspect a part of any optimal solution will come from reviewing how sexual criminality is handled as a whole, and without infringing heavily on the privacy of individuals. Things like molestation, sexual assault and conventional rape are also drastically under reported, and despite the significant lawful disincentives in place against those, the social incentives for the perpetrators are often greater. There isn't much risk as long as any potential evidence is controlled, after all, and the "it's wrong" angle won't prevent everyone from partaking.
In addition, if there's a way to disincentivise this kind of relationship from the base level, in addition to existing laws, then that's probably a good start. That might have to come through social changes first and foremost. After all, when people speak about something like conventional rape, they're rarely talking about the laws in place being reviewed for whatnot -- they generally speak about shifting perspectives and the role of social movements in reducing the problem at the base. In this case, though, we don't just have to stop legal adults from engaging in relationships with minors, but minors from willingly participating.
tl;dr I don't really know what can be done or how, but I suspect the solution won't come, strictly speaking, from policy or law.
I've known minors who've done this kind of thing, and as I said, I would have been complicit when I was underage. I know the perspective in play here. Never actually done it myself, as a minor or (hopefully obviously) as a legal adult, but you could say there's some experience speaking.
The information concerning other sex crimes can be commonly found. On the matter of conclusive evidence, that's a common baseline factor in handing out convictions; a judge or jury can't just be "well, this looks funny" and hand out a punishment -- they need substantial enough evidence that they could prove, within reasonable circumstances, that a particular thing actually happened. Thus why sex crimes are so difficult to deal with. Being so private, it's not easy to gather the necessary evidence in both a timely manner and without infringing on privacy.
So, you're not actually in any unique/intimate position to make any especially informed statements on the issue, then. Especially in this age, where almost every minor's consuming porn featuring adults on the internet.
Speaking from a position where I'm far too familiar with this situation, (Through school, EMT work and some horrifying personal experiences) I think that much of your posts are irrelevant and, on some points, flat-out wrong; the fact that some minors are complicit in their exploitation is irrelevant, and shifting attention to it wouldn't do anything to remedy the situation any further. In fact, it could even serve to undermine sentiments conducive to aid. Most minors that partake in these kinds of relationships know that they're wrong/forbidden/whatever and don't say anything not because they're satisfied, but because they're afraid of 'getting in trouble' for one reason or other, or because of the aforementioned power imbalance.
I'm not sure that that's a sensible position. Considering the fact that there are power imbalances, less-than-ideal home conditions, and the fact that we're talking about minors who often don't have the frame of reference to know to listen to their parents, teachers and peers, I don't see how shifting more responsibility onto them is a good course of action.
Age of consent laws, the fact that these relationships are taboo, sex education, and other social factors are already established countermeasures to that. This component of the issue is already addressed and acknowledged; the rest of the responsibility here lies with the adults who would go against all the aforementioned countermeasures and break the law. There's no need to weigh the minor's involvement any more heavily or state that it's a "significant obstacle"; that's irrelevant.
It depends. A lot of people don't seem to understand the perspectives of either participant. Short of having engaged in this myself, this is about as much experience with the matter as I could possibly have. I'd rather not play the game of who-is-more-experienced-in-this, though, because we may as well judge that point by who can piss the highest. Just know that I respect your experience in this area, but I don't consider it to override mine. And since you have experience, I'll take that into consideration as I continue to respond.
The fact that many minors are complicit is very technically and objectively relevant, because it allows legal adults to get away with it. And there's no doubt there are other reasons that minors won't leave such a relationship, but in my experience, they think they're getting what they want. I wouldn't go as far as to say they're "satisfied", but given their lack of experience, what they get is a close enough simulation of a conventional relationship that they might think everything's fine.
It's not about shifting responsibility, but raising awareness and making minors more heavily aware of the points against relationships with this kind of power imbalance. A victim shouldn't have to be burdened with the responsibility of a perpetrator, but reducing complicity would improve the situation vastly. We would hope that legal adults would largely be responsible enough not to take advantage of a minor, but given that's not the case, it might do some good to work from both angles.
None of those things have actually solved the problem, though. I'm not trying to blame minors here, but working with them in order to prevent this kind of thing happening sounds like a highly sensible course of action to me. In fact, one of the biggest issues is how difficult it is to get the law involved, and even then, there's no guarantee of a conviction.
Ultimately, it's true that legal adults should not be doing this. That's where the blame lies. Blaming isn't what I'm concerned about, though; these crimes rely on the victims being complicit, and a successful solution will be one that disincentivises this kind of relationship at the root for both participants.
Formal, I completely get your perspective. I think. If I'm right about where you're coming from, you think my perspective comes dangerously close to victim blaming, but that's not what my aim is here. What I'd like to see in the future is social solutions to this that simply make minors not want to do this, because that's the factor many of these discussions ignore or gloss over. If a minor gets caught up in it and can't escape, that's not their fault, but it would still be helpful if minors held perspectives from the beginning that would help nip this in the bud.
Don't take this the wrong way, but after thinking it over for a bit, I've decided that it wouldn't be fair to you for me to continue participating in this thread.
While I respect the fact that you've made sure uphold a calm environment in which to have this discussion, I have to acknowledge that I have a habit of flying off the handle and making an ass of myself when it comes to this topic in particular, and I'd like to quit while you still have a (hopefully) good opinion of me.
thug lyfe
No problems, Formal. For my part, I was also about to leave the discussion after making a similar post to the one you just did. I think I need to get some distance from Serious Business for a bit.