Stating that minors can consent to sexual relationships with adults promotes children’s sexual abuse

SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES:

• Finkelhor, D. (1979). What’s wrong with sex between adults and children? Ethics and the problem of sexual abuse. American journal of Orthopsychiatry, 49(4), 692-697.
• Joleby, M., Lunde, C., Landström, S., & Jonsson, L. S. (2021). Offender strategies for engaging children in online sexual activity. Child Abuse & Neglect, 120, 105214.
• Weiss, K. (2002). Authority as coercion: When authority figures abuse their positions to perpetrate child sexual abuse. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 11(1), 27-51.

COMMENT:

The statement that minors have the right to consent to sexual relationships with adults promotes children’s sexual abuse. In fact, this is one of the arguments that children’s sexual aggressors have used to justify their sexual abuses for decades. The strategies of children’s sexual offenders, identified as “grooming”, imply the emotional manipulation of children.

Evidence from the beginning of the study of CSA (Children Sexual Abuse) confirms that children cannot provide informed consent. Moreover, the legal framework protects them in front of adult people who want to justify their abuse under the pretext of minor consent, which is a hoax.  According to Finkelhor (1979) the Children Sexual Abuse (CSA) act assumes that a child cannot provide full informed consent, since they lack true freedom to accept or decline participation. The own position of authority that an adult has in relation to a child is considered coercion (Weiss, 2002). CSA offenders know that, and usually use diverse grooming strategies to manipulate children and their adult environment (Joleby et al, 2021).