Cheated

We respond to a lot of young teen victims. I actually feel a particular affinity for these clients. Perhaps because I remember pretty well the frustration of wanting to be grown up and at the same time having rules I didn't understand holding me back, as well as a healthy dose of being totally clueless.

With so many of these, mostly girls, I see kids who may or may not have adequate supervision from their parents . . . or I see that they have, already at such young ages, been asked to absorb so many problems well beyond their own levels of maturity. And, I see girls who want to be grown up and men who will tell them whatever they want to hear for a bit of action.

When I talk to girls, I try to convey . . . and as I get older, I suspect I'm less convincing . . . that jumping straight from meeting a guy, flirting a bit, to having sex is skipping over a lot of fun stuff. It's fun to have a crush . . . to wait for the phone call . . . to walk on cloud 9 because he did call . . . to have him hold your hand . . . that first nervous kiss. Being a teen is hard enough without cheating yourself out of the stuff that makes being a teen fun.

I also try to address my idea that decent guys wouldn't ask you to break rules, get in trouble with parents (or police/DSS), ask you to risk getting pregnant or an STD. I try to convince girls that one of the reasons 22 year old guys are interested in 13 year old girls is because girls their own age expect them to be adults and 13 year olds don't expect much. I point out that if I'm a 20 year old girl dating a 20 year old boy, I expect him to have a job, to be in school, to call when he says he is . . . to show up on time . . . and to be honest, reliable, etc. Whereas, if I'm a 13 year old girl dating a 20 year old guy . . . any attention he pays is enough . . . even if he's selling drugs or not working or disrespectful of me, my family, and friends.

I'm not really advocating a return to "past values." I'm really not. There are all kinds of problems with the power dynamic created by the "traditional" dating. But, I'm thinking some mutual respect and shared power in a relationship has to be better than 13 year olds being labeled "problem" children and arrested for "running away" when they were lured by men who should know better. I'm also frustrated by the trend I see in these cases, where we assign more responsibility and blame to the kid who got caught up in feeling grown up than the adult who manipulated and acted criminally.