Sexual Assault Can A 13 Year Old Be To 'blame' For The Sexual Activity With An Adult?

[Lucycat]

RdeC you are absolutely correct. The sad thing is that the judge was 'blaming' the victim for enticing or encouraging the perpetrator. It shows a total lack of understanding. Any child acting in that way, as you say, is doing it for a reason.

His insensitive words reinforce that sexual assault/abuse is the victim's fault. So many of us feel like that anyway that we really do not need professionals who should know better spreading the same myths. No wonder there is a stigma to being a survivor!

 

[Badger]

I was 13 when I got involved with a 27 year old police officer in a position of authority over me. It's hard not to want to impress an adult. I was absolutely ignorant about sex, I had never even kissed someone before. He used to say he wanted to "Grow me up and marry me." Didn't do much good for my attitude about marriage and I think it turned me into someone who detested authority figures pretty much overnight. Anyone who represented anything in authority, teachers etc. After it was all over at around 16, I started skipping school and hanging out with all the outcasts and lost my interest in becoming an accompllished person in anything. I basically cultivated underacheivement as a goal. I went from an A student to a serious F-up.

Just because most teenagers are turned on by, well, anything, doesn't mean that should be exploited by an adult who knows better. There's a reason a 13 year old is not considered an adult, poor judgement is a part of that. There also a huge difference in power there. Children are conditioned to obey adults. Predators mostly don't start out doing aweful painful things to their prey, that would be too obvious. In fact the guy who abused me wasn't ever really sadistic. They start out by doing things that are borderline socially acceptable like putting their arm around you while they are explaining something, etc.

 

[Lucycat]

In the news today;
A 60 year old man in Italy,has had his sentence overturned, for having sex with an 11 year old girl because they share a genuine loving emotional bond;

Dead Link Removed

 

[cherryblossom]

Oh my god

Social worker Pietro Lamberti of Catanzaro, southern Italy, was sentenced to five years in prison in February 2011 after he was convicted of sexual acts with a minor, AFP writes.

The agency adds the verdict was upheld by an appeals court but overturned by Italy’s supreme court, which ruled it did not sufficiently consider “the ‘consensus’, the existence of an amorous relationship, the absence of physical force, the girl’s feelings of love.”

I'm horrified!! I really don't know what else to say.

 

[digger]

I find news stories like this personally very disturbing. There have been so many similar and high profile cases in the UK over the past few years, or it seems that way anyway, perhaps I have just become more sensitive to noticing them.

My parents split up when I was seven because my dad was involved in a 'relationship' with a fourteen year old girl. And I am sorry for using the word relationship because that is not fair on her, but I find it difficult finding the right words to use because this is how it was presented to us at the time.

From what I have learned since, this had been going on for some time before it all came out, and people knew about. I don't remember anyone at any time suggesting it or he was wrong. Her parents knew about it. My aunt's, uncle's, grandparents all knew about it. Friends of the family knew about it. My dad seemed to walk away from it without blame. When she was sixteen she moved into my father's house, her own dad paid half the deposit on the mortgage for that house.

My mum blamed the girl. Always. I suspect others did too.

I grew up with it as normal and believing that if any blame was to be placed anywhere it was on the girl.

I remember when it first all came out, there were people who wouldn't talk to us and who crossed the road to avoid us, so maybe there was some indirect blame there.

Sorry this is a bit jumbled. What I'm trying to say is it doesn't seem unusual for blame to be put on the wrong people. I had to figure out for myself that it was no way her fault. No one seemed prepared to say anything except stuff against her.

She was a child. As we're those in these news stories. No way we're any of them to blame.

 

[bluebird]

...I had a horrible panick attack after seeing a photo of two-years old me in a nice red skirt and a loose T-shirt, which left one shoulder naked... It kind of made me feel responsible for being abused, it all came back again, again, over and over, although I tried to fight these feelings, I looked at the bare skin and then realized I consider myself a whore (and yes, I know pretty well I was two on this photo and it was just one shoulder). I don´t know how many times I have already been told it wasn´t my fault, and yet I don´t really believe that. Telling a child it was basicly his/her own fault is a terrible and guge error... No matter the age. The victim is already struggling with self-hate and other issues and these verdicts just feel like being stabbed in the back... :/

 

[Lucycat]

Hi @bluebird , I have some pictures of myself aged around 6 or 7 years. I was a pretty little girl with long blond hair that I could sit on. I look at that picture, and think 'how could he?' I no longer think that a small child can entice an adult into anything sexual - it is the adult that is deviant.

Neither the 2 year old you, or the 7 year old me ever asked to be abused. In fact at that age we were not even responsible for the clothes we were dressed in or the style of haircut. We were not responsible in any way for the way we looked. Our actions were those taught to us by parents, so we were not even responsible for the ways in which we acted at such young ages.

I do hope in time that you will truly believe that it was not your fault - because that is the truth!

 

[Melp283]

I don't think there is any reason why a child should be blamed, no matter how they were dressed or how they acted. They are a child.
There is a difference between an adult who absolutely knows the difference between right and wrong and a child/young adult who doesn't even know who they are yet.
We as adults are supposed to protect the young, even if it's from themselves.