Socializing With Adults

Anyone who wants to understand why children would willingly go into a situation where they can be exploited by adults needs to understand that a hostile or physically dangerous home environment can drive children to seek freedom.

To many children adulthood is what they think of when they think of freedom.

The hostility may not be caused by parents. It may be caused by someone else who is in the child's household or who frequents that household.

The hostile (from the child's POV) environment might not fit our stereotypes of an abusive home. Verbal abuse can make a child want to be anywhere but home. If the home is lonely because parents are absent -- either through choice or economic necessity that may lead the child to look for ways to end the loneliness.

Many a predator knows that the easiest way to succeed is to be the nicest, the funnest or the most reliable person in a child's life. Predators know that if they try to grab a child off the street and if they don't succeed that child will run screaming and everyone will know that they are person with bad intentions.

Some people have the mistaken belief that statutory rape laws exist because the lawmakers assume that all activities with individuals below this age are overtly coercive. Sometimes this is true, but some times sexual predators exploit children's needs and children's coping skills.

Think about those charged with statutory crimes that were committed after a small child climbed into the defendant's lap. The child wasn't coerced into the adult's or teen's lap, the child was trusting. Being a trusting child isn't a crime and it shouldn't nullify a crime.

Another example might be a child agreeing to sex with an adult because that child knows that sex will provide them with a place to stay that is safer than the street.

Viewing this choice as a reason to nullify the adult's legal responsibility opens the door for more adults to prey on children who are vulnerable and often have a tough exterior.

A child who has a history of being systematically sexually abused may cope by acting like that sexual abuse means nothing. If an abuser declared absolute ownership of a child's body that child might feel that having sex with others spits in the face of the original abuser. "See, you don't own me."

A child's attempt to cope or a child's rebelliousness should never be used as a reason to allow adults to not be accountable simply because they weren't the first person to commit a sex crime against that child.

Adults who claim to be victims of sexy children are not victims at all, but are providing their rationalizations for ignoring the law.