I haven't read the details of every post on this topic, but no one seems to have mentioned the fact that Jezebel decided to place some of the blame on the mother who left her daughter with a questionable man. Okay, well maybe that's irresponsible parenting, but it seems disturbingly similar to blaming the victim. If he'd raped an adult, would it be her fault for being around someone who was questionable? Rendering someone unable to make decisions by giving them mind-altering substances and then penetrating them is rape at any age (I don't know what the criminal statutes are in all states, I know that meets the legal definition in CA). And no matter who the perpetrator is, he's a criminal. Just like a thief is still a thief if she takes something from your house after you've left it unlocked, a rapist is still a rapist even if the victim (or her mother) exercised poor judgment in putting herself in a vulnerable situation. How is this even a question?

Blaming the mother of the victim is perfectly fair in this instance. It isn't victim blaming, because she isn't the victim. She used extremely poor judgment and left her daughter unprotected with a much older man, who drugged and violated the child. She utterly failed in her most sacred duty, which is to protect her child from harm, probably in part because she was so star-struck by celebrity that she turned off her "danger" signal.

I've got a 12 year old daughter, & I am a sex crime prosecutor, so I am going to suggest that I have some expertise here. Bad, inattentive moms lead to vulnerable children which leads to abused children. If a man, who was not my daughter's father, wanted to spend a significant amount of time alone with her, the alarm bells would go off so fast and so loud that I would run, not walk, away from the guy. And so should everyone -- excessive adult interest in your children by someone who is not biologically connected to the child is almost never motivated by altruism -- there is generally some intent to exploit involved.

I know that there will be those who respond that this isn't fair, that not everyone is a child molester. I am not talking about sealing your kid away in a bubble, I'm talking about using common sense and good judgemtn in allowing unrelated adults "alone & unsupervised time" with your kid. No one has a right to spend time unsupervised with your child other than you & the child's other parent. It is not unfair to refuse to allow your child to spend time with someone if you have apprehensions about it. You don't need to articulate the apprehensions, you don't need to share the apprehensions, and it may be completely unfair to the person about whom you are apprehensive, but protecting your child is a higher priority than making someone feel bad that you are uncomfortable with letting your kid spend the night at their house. And, unequivocally, if a single guy in his 40's wants your 12-16 year old daughter to spend the night at his house, even if he has been your best friend forever, unequivocally say no way, never, not gonna happen.

In this case, the girl's mother has to live with the fact that she used bad judgment and someone used that opportunity to harm her child. She's partially responsible for the result, although clearly not for the conduct of the real bad guy in the situation.

The facts of life are these: One has to protect themselves from becoming a victim. Yes, the rapist is still a rapist and the women is still a rape victim, but that doesn't mean people should talk about poor judgement and how people place themselves in harm's way.

This needs to be talked about to educate people. Then others might use better judgement in the future and thus it would be harder on criminal.

I had a friend that was letting his 12 year old son and one of his friends stay over at a single guy's house because they all liked surfing. I started to ask questions and it was clear my friend didn't know enough about the guy. He was just being lazy ('hey, I would have to drive over 50 miles to pick him up and take him home,,,so it is better for him to just spend the night,,, I don't see a problem'. I made it clear that IF something occured to his son HE as the father was part of the problem.

I agree with both these posts here...I don't want to downplay the irresponsibility of the mother. I was more commenting on the discussion in Jezebel that seemed to imply that it's not so much Polanski's fault. The undertone of the commentary, as I read it, was that the 13 year old may have consented, and it's the mother who's to blame that they were alone together for her to do so. Yes, the mom made a terrible decision. But Polanski is still a criminal in my book. And I definitely agree that one should take precautions in all aspects of one's life, but in cases of rape in particular, 'victim-blame' has a particular resonance b/c there always remains the undertone that of 'course all a man wants is sex no matter what and he can't be blamed if he becomes violent or criminal to get it'. There are few other crimes that I know of where so much of the discussion centers on whether the victim "deserved" it.

"If a man, who was not my daughter's father, wanted to spend a significant amount of time alone with her, the alarm bells would go off so fast and so loud that I would run, not walk, away from the guy."

Really? No one? Not her soccer coach, not her rad uncle Jamie who takes her fishing, not her karate sensei, not her piano tutor?

Boy, am I glad my mother wasn't as uptight as you. We were just told that we had a right to privacy, if anyone made us uncomfortable we were to tell them to fuck off and call mom, and our parents kept up a rapport with us so they could see changes in our behaviour.

I think that automatically assuming every older man who thinks your daughter is neat is trying to molest her is fear-mongering of the worst sort. Some men like WOMEN, see, and think that a smart 12 year old girl is just that, a neat kid.

Are you that paranoid about other women? If you had a 12 year old son, and the college-age technogeek chick next door offered to help him with his model rocket, would you assume she meant to rape him?

Don't get me wrong, if Polanski had ALREADY been hitting on the girl, the mother would be a moron for sending her kid over there. However, if up until that point he had been the model of respectability, then she made an unfortunate mistake, not a bad judgement call.

Sweeping paranoia of this sort is the reason so few people have functional social skills anymore.

Freki

'and it's the mother who's to blame that they were alone together'.

The mother IS to blame for the fact they were allowed to be alone together! 100% to blame for THAT specific event.

Now the mother isn't to blame for the RAPE (that would be the rapist!), but she is clearly to blame 100% for placing in kid in this situation.

Hey, Freki. Yes, I am that uptight. My teenaged daughter does not spend the night alone with a man who isn't her father. She also, incidentally, doesn't spend the night alone with a boy who isn't her brother, but that's a topic for another day. I think that you and I are going to have to agree to disagree on this one, which is fine, since we actually have a lot in common in other areas.

And, while I am certain that you were exactly the sort of assertive kid who was never going to be the victim of abuse, I would suggest to you that you are unusual in that way (as well as many others -- in a good way). Many more compliant and less independent children are "groomed" into "consenting" to abuse by extremely manipulative adult males. My "sweeping paranoia", as you have called it (unfairly in my view) will keep my kids safe.

Let me clarify what I am not talking about: I am not talking about never letting my kid have a sleepover with friends. She does that. I am not talking about never letting her go to a movie, or hang out with, or spend time in public with a soccer coach, riding instructor, friend & her dad, etc. What I am talking about is that warning bell in the back of my head -- which I trust and will always trust. What I am talking about is sleepovers with grownups, particularly grown-ups who are adult males.

My "sweeping paranoia" is also informed by 13 years of sex abuse prosecution in which, in my view, the parents frequently ignored perfectly obvious warning signs regarding the relationship between their child and an adult who sought to exploit the child. And, yes, it makes a difference if it's an adult male, because in all of my experience, I have prosecuted men 50-1 (at least) for sex crimes.

Emmajane, I think we may have both overstated our cases. I was not calling you uptight for not letting your daughter stay overnight at the house of some cool dude she met at the bus stop. Obviously, if some person really rings your alarm bells, that is reason for extra caution, but the sweeping generalization of all unrelated men as potential rapists does seem like overkill to me.

I have to ask, as a prosecutor (my aunt is one too) how many of the sex crimes you have prosecuted have been committed by the father, grandfather, stepfather, or mom's live-in boyfriend of the victim? How many were by the father of the best friend whose house the victim was allowed to stay at?

It is my understanding that most rapes are committed by someone very close to the victim. I don't know if this is the case with child molestation also.

If it is the case, is it the strangers you should be worried about, or the relatives?

Freki

PS sorry about being nasty there. I just finished posting in a bit of a flame war on another site, and I think it got my dander up....

Freki, overwhelmingly most sex crimes are committed by members of the victim's immediate circle. The step-dad is the most common. Beyond that category of individual, sex crimes are overwhelming committed by individuals who have the stamp of parental approval, which in my experience has included: soccer coach (a bunch of times); scout leader (a cliche, I know); youth leader from the church; old family friend, best-friend's dad, uncle, cousin, and the drunk guy that mom met on a bar-stool last night & moved in by morning.

The way that I look it, as best I can articulate it, isn't why "shouldn't" I let my kid hang out with this person, but why "should" I. The burden for me is in establishing that someone is an appropriate, healthy and wholesome influence on her life. Until I'm convinced of that, it's a no go, which is my right as a parent. I cannot imagine that I would have found Roman Polanski to be an appropriate, healthy & wholesome influence.

True stranger to child assaults are rare indeed. It's not the guy in the bushes you need to worry about -- it's the guy that you invited over for dinner, or the guy who shares your bed, or the guy who coaches or teaches your kid. Which is why I am very circumspect in who I give unfettered access to my kiddos.

Yeah, I was talking "in general", I can't imagine Roman Polanski striking me as a super-wholesome role model for my kid either.

It seems like a bit of a conundrum, wherein the people most likely to have a positive effect on your child's life (coach, scout leader, pastor, etc) are also the ones most likely to hurt her.

The reason I brought up fearing women as statutory rapists is because people don't really seem to have much of a problem with it. The only examples of statutory rape I have seen in my social circle have been boys with much older women. My friend S dated a 26 year old woman when he was 14 (to her credit, I guess, she told him it was over if his grades slipped..they did..she broke up with him as gently as possible) and his mother barely batted an eye.

The other example is a woman I find reprehensible, who at 40 started having sex with her best friend's 16 year old son. I am not sure if that was technically statutory rape here(I live in Washington State) but I was APPALLED by the number of people who thought it was unfair of the boy's mother to be ANGRY at the older woman!

I have to question if the ratio of sex crimes committed by men vs. women is skewed by society's utter indifference to women being with boys.

Freki

I cannot imagine that a mentally healthy 26 year old woman would be "dating" a 14 year old boy. Blanket rule: if they are still in middle school, then they shouldn't be "dating" someone who is old enough to have graduated from college. I can't imagine that the community wouldn't look askance at a 26 year old man being sexually involved with a 14 year old girl, & I really see no difference at all in terms of sexual maturity and likelihood of psychological harm to the youth, between a 14 year old girl & a 14 year old boy.

Hey, don't get me wrong, I certainly look askance at it! I didn't know my friend S when he was 14, but his mother's story goes something like "I thought it was wierd that a 26 year old wanted to date my boy, but she seemed nice, and she was helping him with his homework".

There was no "Jesus Christ, she could be ASSIGNING him his homework!" but I am positive that if she had been a man, and he was a girl, the authorities would have been called.

In the other case, the 40 year old woman with the 16 year old boy, they are still together. He is now 21. She cannot for the life of her figure out why the boy's mother still thinks it is gross. I want to shake her and yell "if my 35-year-old husband started doing your 15-year-old daughter, you would be pissed for YEARS! And you would be well within your rights to be!"

It is worth noting that she guards her 15-year-old daughter zealously. Won't it be a shocker when the kid exhibits some inappropriate sexual behaviour...I wonder where she would learn that?

It is not even the age difference that I find creepy, so much as the power differential. The boy knew this lady for years in a position of authority--she was his mother's best friend. There is no way to go from responsible adult and bratty teenager to boyfriend and girlfriend in an equitable way. IMHO.

Freki

I didn't respond to your statement regarding statutory rape being under-reported among boys. I think that you may be right -- statutory sex offenses against boys are probably under-reported, although I'm not sure how helpful this is, since statutory sex offenses against girls are also under-reported. I do believe, after years of exposure, that men are far more likely to be sex offenders than women. This is based upon my anecdotal experience, but I believe that my anecdotal experience is born out by scientific literature. Certainly, with respect to actual pedophilia (which I define as adults who are sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children) it is my vast experience that pedophiles are almost exclusively heterosexual males.

I specify heterosexual because it is also my experience that certain extremely politically conservative segments of our population want to believe that homosexuality and pedophila are interchangeable, and that all gay men can't wait to get their hands on small boys. I have not found this to be true. I have prosecuted many men who molested male children, and nearly all of them self-identified as heterosexual and were involved in sexual relationships with adult females.

I agree with you totally that the behavior you have seen is totally inappropriate, and I further agree that women who offend should be held accountable just like men.

I have to say that this is one of the best exchanges that I have seen on XX Factor. Thank you for the information. I totally agree about the mother's responsibility. Before I say this, let me say that I don't think victims are to blame for the terrible crimes that are committed against them. That said, however, there is a certain level of personal responsibility in situational awareness, good choices, etc. Clearly these caveats aren't always relevant like someone breaking into your home, but for instance, wandering down a dark alley, etc. There are just clearly certain situations where your chances of being victimized are increased. Following that, it seems that since a child is just that, a child, the parent is responsible for the situational awareness and clearly this mother failed her daughter with regard to Polanski.

Clearly these caveats aren't always relevant like someone breaking into your home

*** Well I disagree with this line. I was dating a nurse that lived on the first story. On hot nights she would leave her window open. I told her it would be easy for anyone to break in while she was a sleep. In other words it was crazy to NOT have something to ensure cool air could get in but a human could not.

It wasn't until the paper had a story about a guy that was raping women by climbing into windows of first story apts that she locked everything everynight and use the AC.

Sadly one has to do what it takes to protect themselves from scum.