January 12, 2002

12:08 PM

A 9-year-old girl has been arrested on sex charges, perhaps the youngest suspect ever to face such charges in Manchester, local police say. [...] The alleged incident occurred in the fall, when the girl and three other children a 3-year-old boy and two girls, 4 and 5 were playing in a bedroom, [Police Sgt. John] Maston said. The girl is charged with initiating sex between the younger children and then with her, Maston said. (From Boston.com, via Billy Wildhack.) I admit I don't have all the facts, but it seems like this little girl's life about to be ruined because a game of Doctor went out of hand.
posted by RylandDotNet (46 comments total)

It's really hard to make a judgement considering how few details are given here (what is "initiating sex"?). But if it had been a boy, I don't think anyone would be calling it "playing doctor".
posted by jpoulos at 12:29 PM on January 12, 2002

But if it had been a boy, I don't think anyone would be calling it "playing doctor".

Why not? Boy or girl, we're talking about a 9-year-old.

This story reminds me of the episode of WKRP in Cincinnati where the guest was ranting about how all children are insane and should be locked up.
posted by homunculus at 12:59 PM on January 12, 2002

This stuff happens all the time. My experience was when I was 7. It involved another boy, 8, and three girls, one aged 6, the other two also aged 8. It involved touching, licking and sucking but no boy-boy or girl-girl stuff and no penetration. Both of us boys got boners but, of course, neither of us ejaculated.

I participated in two other sessions that summer with various combinations of the above. Maybe the people I hang with were more naturally open toward sex at a young age, but given all the anecdotes I have heard as an adult, this is normal, natural childhood experimentation. The age span in this incident is a bit wide, but still nothing I would consider extreme.

Making an issue of this incident will have far graver consequences than acknowledging that humans are sexual animals right from the very start. Repression and denial are the real enemies here.
posted by mischief at 1:04 PM on January 12, 2002

geez, mischief, the boy is three. I agree with you in principle, and I don't mean to suggest that the poor girl is some sort of sexual predator or anything, but nine year-olds having sex with three-year-olds isn't something we can just overlook.
posted by jpoulos at 1:12 PM on January 12, 2002

An interesting read: The Sexual Life of Children. It seems to be a legitimate bit of research work. Found it back when I was trying to figure out if my friend's three-year-old's behaviour was unusual. Greatly relieved to find out it wasn't. :-)
posted by five fresh fish at 1:17 PM on January 12, 2002

I think that's the key, mischief--the age discrepancy. If the girls and boys involved had been within a year or two of nine then the situation would be entirely different. As it is, the question becomes, "Would anything have happened between the others if the 9 year old had not been there to instigate it?" I would say most likely not, and that's the problem.

Of course, most likely the nine year old has been shielded from even a cursory knowledge of sexuality and sexual responsibility her entire life. They mention that she is being told now that what she did is wrong, but does anyone believe that someone, anyone tried to teach her how wrong it was before all this happened?

When I grew up, my parents alternated between calling my genitalia my "forbidden zone" and "secret place"--and that's about all the information I got until my Mom tried to explain sex to me when I was 17 (!). I mean, Forbidden zone? Secret place? Sheesh, that just made me all the more curious--and in fact, led me to experimentation with other folks around my same age with the same curiosities. (About 8 or 9 years old in fact.)

I shudder to think what would have happened to me had a much older person offered to help "explain" what my forbidden zone was all about. I had no idea how serious it all really was--it just seemed exciting that I wasn't supposed to know.
posted by Swifty at 1:20 PM on January 12, 2002

anyone want to explain to me how a 3 yr old male had any sort of sex with any girls....

i cant remember that far back but im sure _it_ didnt function the way it does a few years down the road.
posted by Satapher at 1:20 PM on January 12, 2002

Can an American explain what "4th degree" assault might be? Am I right in thinking that it's the least severe?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:41 PM on January 12, 2002

It seems most likely that the nine-year-old girl has been molested herself.

Nine isn't impossibly early for female sexuality: "...girls in this country today are reaching menarche (the age when girls get their first period) sooner than girls 100 years ago. In 1890, the average age of menarche in the United States was 14.8 years. Today it's 12.5, according to the study in Pediatrics, which tracked 17,000 girls to find out when they hit different markers of puberty. Other developmental changes begin much sooner, often at age 8."

As for children and sexually inappropriate behavior: the State of Washington is in a quandary about how to handle a 13-year-old male sex offender.
posted by Carol Anne at 1:43 PM on January 12, 2002

Can a 3 year old boy even "have sex?" Is it even possible?

Yes, the age discrepency is disturbing. But many kids play "doctor" at her age (abiet with no intercourse..still don't think that's possible.) Perhaps all that is needed is for her to have a discussion with her parents about what is "okay" and what isn't appropriate. I don't know if 4th degree assault is necessary.
posted by aacheson at 1:58 PM on January 12, 2002

But jpoulos is right, there are very few details given here. It's hard to tell what happened. Is it parents overreacting or something really wrong?
posted by aacheson at 1:59 PM on January 12, 2002

You all are the ones out of touch . In this day and age, 7 to 9 year olds know a disturbing amount of information about sexuality -disturbing because of the context. When one of my daughters was in second grade, the other students were teasing her about supposedly "doing it" with another student in the class-and everyone knew what was being referred to....that is one reason i started home schooling the following year, for four years.......during that approximate time period I also did a little volunteer work in the school-which was for students in k-2nd grade-and i frequently would eat lunch with them....the students would often talk about the r-rated movies they had seen.......innocence is dead, people-stone cold stinking dead.......
posted by bunnyfire at 2:07 PM on January 12, 2002

perhaps it is, but we shouldn't expect a child to be responsible about sex just because s/he knows about it. which means we shouldn't hold children responsible for "sexual misconduct." unless you're suggesting that a nine-year-old should be mature about sex...

two things here are wrong: that the girl was doing this, and that she was arrested for it.
posted by zerolucid at 2:12 PM on January 12, 2002

Is it parents overreacting

AAAAAAH! the CHILDREN are HAVING SEX and NOW beth is PREGNANT!!
posted by fuq at 2:55 PM on January 12, 2002

I get the feeling that this is a case of a kid playing "show me yours and I'll show you mine," due mainly to the lack of description of what the kid did. It seems like if there were details on what specific acts were done, they would have been reported, if only because luridity sells papers. I hope that's all it was, anyway. If there is more to it, then I'd wonder if the girl had been abused herself. I certainly don't consider it a criminal act either way.

If that is all it was, though, I don't see what the big deal is. I'm not saying I think kids should be encouraged (or discouraged, for that matter) to indulge in sexual play, I just don't think they should be made to feel dirty and immoral when they do it. Teach them when it is and isn't appropriate, just as you teach them when it's appropriate to eat or empty your bowels.
posted by RylandDotNet at 3:01 PM on January 12, 2002

This arrest makes the age of consent laws look a bit odd doesnt it?
If the 9 year old had had sex with an older party, legally she would have been blameless, because she is not old enough to consent to it.
So if a person is "unable" to make a descision about sex, and is therefore relieved of responsibility for their actions, how then is it possible to accuse someone of that age of instigating a sex act?

Is there any sort of legal precedent?
posted by esquilax at 3:08 PM on January 12, 2002

For those who are asking, if you've raised a young son (in my case, stepston) you'll know that little boys can have erections even as infants. And, while they can't ejaculate until puberty, I'm pretty sure they can even experience orgasm from a very young age.
posted by jpoulos at 3:23 PM on January 12, 2002

the other students were teasing her about supposedly "doing it" with another student in the class-and everyone knew what was being referred to....that is one reason i started home schooling the following year

Frankly, bunnyfire, if that's true, then that's a ridiculous overreaction. I remember lots of cruel teasing in elementary school, but I also remember lots of strange, harmless joking about sex acts of which we had no understanding -- you did it with her [pointing to janitor] etc. It was all fairly silly and surreal -- we had no real idea what we were talking about. But it was all, I think, basically necessary; children mess around with thoughts they haven't had time to understand fully just as a way of experimenting.

innocence is dead, people-stone cold stinking dead.

Come off it already. Maybe yours is. When the hell was humanity so frickin' "innocent" to begin with? Why is it that everyone gets to adulthood and believes that -- by a miraculous coincidence -- the innocence of the world died just as they became adults? Pardon me if I'm overreacting, but I am so tired of this bit of cognitive nonsense that people put out without a bit of question. Think it through.
posted by argybarg at 4:54 PM on January 12, 2002

I feel a little bit silly to bring this up, but, according to my mother, I've been masturbating since I was 2 years old. It was just called "The Penis Thing," and the technique is very much different from what most would label "jerking off." I can say for a fact that I experienced the exact same feeling I get when I reach orgasm at my current ripe age. Suppossedly, I was able to accomplish this because I'm not circumsized.

When I was in kindergarten, I slept naked with my "girlfriend" in a sleeping bag, and we bragged that we had sex.
posted by Mach3avelli at 5:19 PM on January 12, 2002

we had no real idea what we were talking about

speak for yourself, argybarg, your friends all told me that they knew exactly what they were talking about and that you were always a little slow.
posted by David Dark at 5:25 PM on January 12, 2002

geez, mischief, the boy is three.

my two nephews (one four, the other five) get erect and play with themselves. they've been doing it (separately. i dunno if they've done anything together) since infancy. it happens. i remember doing the same thing when i was about their age, and i'd played doctor with neighborhood kids of both sexes several times. i don't think this case with the 9 year old is anything more than kids playing doctor and some overreactive parents.

in second grade, the other students were teasing her about supposedly "doing it" with another student in the class-and everyone knew what was being referred to....

just like we were doing in second grade. we knew what a penis was, and a vagina, and we knew the theory behind what you were supposed to do with the two things. easy things to look up in an encyclopaedia. we knew what 'doing it' and 'making love' were. we knew where babies come from. children are smarter and more aware than people like to give them credit for, and they're curious.
they don't have to be taught theses things. they'll figure it out on their own (of course, the parents need to step in and explain the things they didn't figure out, like STDs and condoms and the negative aspects of teen pregnancy, and when it's not ok for someone to touch them or to touch someone else).
posted by tolkhan at 5:29 PM on January 12, 2002

Of course, most likely the nine year old has been shielded from even a cursory knowledge of sexuality and sexual responsibility her entire life.

ehhh, from what I've learned from various sources over the years, probably not. Carol Anne is correct, that when a kid this young acts out sexually in such an explicit manner, they have usually been molested themselves. At that age, most of us(myself included) were still at "I'll show you mine, You show me yours" stage. This definitely went a bit further. The manipulative aspect of how she paired of the younger kids strikes me as a bit creepy. Hopefully, someone's investigating the family situation.
posted by jonmc at 5:38 PM on January 12, 2002

eh, this is kids being kids. Perhaps the girl was molested, but from that brief of a description none of us know what really went on. I think almost all of you played some sort of doctor when you were younger (even if you don't want to admit it) and maybe that was just the set of people she hung around (when i was a kid i had friends 4 years older down to 4 years younger). 10 years ago nobody would have said a word about this.
posted by dig_duggler at 7:15 PM on January 12, 2002

Well, I personaly don't see what the hell the big deal is at all, and why the state is going to charge this girl. I mean I'm pretty certan that the states action (and maybe some of the partents) is what's going to cause far more lasting problems down the line

And secondly, as far as 9year olds 'kowning a lot more now' or whatever, well thats great. But we don't know what this particular girl knew, now do we.

I hope nothing bad happens to this girl, I mean if you want to know what would screw someone up for life...
posted by delmoi at 7:18 PM on January 12, 2002

innocence is dead, people-stone cold stinking dead.......

Good.
posted by Optamystic at 7:50 PM on January 12, 2002

The quotes attributed to Sgt. Maston were disturbing in their own right. Apparently, he is not just an officer of the law, but a licensed therapist able to determine when a child is in denial. Yeah, arresting her is gonna make her "open up."
posted by sillygit at 8:17 PM on January 12, 2002

Why would one conclude that she may have been molested? The age difference? The gender difference?
posted by MrBrett at 8:44 PM on January 12, 2002

Why would one conclude that she may have been molested?

Because while sexual curiousity is inherent; sexual behavior is learned. What she did sounds like learned behavior, not normal curiousity, especially the bringing in of younger participants. If I was the local Dick Tracy, I'd be taking a good look at the 9 year old's male relatives. Hey, could be nothing, just normal kid goofiness blown out of proportion, but it seems odd, so best to check it out.

Clamping down on the 9 year old, who probably has only infinitesimally more of a clue in this area that the others, is sort of stupid. She's not a criminal, obviously; more likely she's mimicking something she either (hopefully not) participated in herself or (hopefully) witnessed unbeknownst to the adult participants.
posted by UncleFes at 9:04 PM on January 12, 2002

Why would one conclude that she may have been molested?

Look, I'm not a shrink, OK, I'm just going with my gut and what's in the story. That said, It's the theatrical, manipulative quality of the whole thing, pairing off the littler kids together then with her, it sounds like something an adult perv would do and a young kid would imitate.
Fashionable defenses of "childhood sexuality" aside, I remember that at that age my sexual urges were inchoate at best. I remember wanting to see girls naked, but I had only the vaguest idea why. I'm not being facetious, that's about what it boiled down to. This kid for whatever reason seems a little too advanced for this to be normal "exploration."
But I agree, arresting her is probably not the way to go, but getting her some help might not be a bad idea.
posted by jonmc at 9:10 PM on January 12, 2002

Sillygit raised an incredibly valid point. Here are the quotes from the article:

Maston would not discuss specifics, but said the girl denies the allegations.

''Because she's in denial, we want to show her the seriousness of what happened, and to get her to open up,'' Maston said.

What? There's hardly been enough published information about this case to really judge, but I'm going to throw my opinion in. I think that charging this girl is law gone mad. Especially if the evidence is as thin as this report makes it out to be.
posted by dejah420 at 10:10 PM on January 12, 2002

Fashionable defenses of "childhood sexuality" aside

tsk. doubly dismissive.

I remember that at that age... wanting to see girls naked, but I had only the vaguest idea why.

at that age, i wanted to see boys naked, and i knew exactly why. i was never molested, and i'd never 'witnessed unbeknownst' or knownst by adults. is there a set, definite age at which a child knows and understands sexuality?

now, dismissing my own defense, i agree that someone should investigate whether the girl had been molested or not. in such cases, it's better to be safe than sorry. i do not, though, think that the girl should be charged with anything and the whole "she's in denial, we want to show her the seriousness of what happened" spiel is bullshit. i don't trust cops to do their own job, why should one be making that determination?

also, if they just want to show her the seriousness of what happened, why charge her with "fourth-degree sexual assault, a misdemeanor, and three counts of risk of injury to a minor, a felony"? wouldn't simply having a cop show up and take her to the station be enough? wouldn't that be enough to scare a nine year old (which is actually what they're doing. not showing her the seriousness, which would involve explaining to her and making her understand that she's done something wrong, but scaring her into feeling that it's wrong. world of difference there)?
posted by tolkhan at 10:56 PM on January 12, 2002

like the girl understands "You've been charged with fouth-degree sexual assault and three counts of risk of injury to a minor. can you see now that this is serious?"

give me a fucking break.
posted by tolkhan at 10:59 PM on January 12, 2002

I work at a grocery store as a cashier. I see kids riding the mechanical horse. (you'd be suprised how bored I get) And I couldn't help think why kids like riding the horse until one day I saw a girl sitting on the saddles handle while it moved. Then it dawned on me...

Well, I guess you know what I am gonna say, and I already feel like a child molester thinkin about it, so I'm going to stop here. But I've seen it so many times since then. I don't believe they know what they are doing, it just happens.
posted by andryeevna at 12:36 AM on January 13, 2002

*This is Mrs. thatwhichfalls, and responsible for my own comments, flame away*

I know from personal experience that sexual activity at age three to five can fuck you up for life, and it's a helluva lot different than a couple of nine-year-olds playing doctor. I have four children, one on the way, and they know what sex is, I've explained it clearly, in age-appropriate terms, and I never euphamised the names for their genetalia. I am proud to say, they all understand their responsibility to themselves and controlling their own bodies, and they have been taught skills to use if someone tries to get them to do something they don't feel good about. We speak openly and frankly about any question they ask me, sexually or otherwise, and they know they can trust me to tell the truth. If a nine-year-old is having sex with a three-year-old boy, and two other girls, SOMETHING IS WRONG with that girl. Yes, I believe she's been molested, yes I believe she hasn't been told in frank and open terms about sexuality and it's consequenses and yes, I believe she needs to suffer SOME consequenses for her actions, but not nesseccarily criminal charges. The therapy is a good start, but a start only.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:26 AM on January 13, 2002

>> Why would one conclude that she may have been
>> molested?
>
> Because while sexual curiousity is inherent; sexual
> behavior is learned.

Why is abuse the only way a nine-year-old girl will learn about sex? She need only see a bit of a dirty movie she shouldn't, or walk in on her parents. or, you know, I didn't have the internet when I was nine, who knows what I'd've come across on Google?

I remember trying to figure out sex with a girl who was a playmate when I was about 7 and she about 5. This consisted mostly of squabbling over who'd have to be "the man", which is to say on top. We'd obviously seen something, somewhere. (I remember as a youngster finding dirty magazines [naked people of both genders, not just women, I knew what *those* looked like] in the closet of a new house my family had just moved into, and also finding naked coed tapdancing on cable at a sleepover once.)

Does that count as "initiating sex"? If so, I think most of us at one point or another in our childhoods would have been eligible for sex-offender status.
posted by Sapphireblue at 10:14 AM on January 13, 2002

Because while sexual curiousity is inherent; sexual behavior is learned.

I remember as a kid taking all the clothes off barbie dolls and making them "do it". I don't remember how specifically we understood what sex was, but my elementary school did teach "how babies are made" in 4th & 5th grade, and I do remember thinking, duh, when they taught us, so I think we figured that stuff out earlier. I was never molested & have no issues with sexuality or anything like that.

It's a little weird that she would use the younger kids as her "dolls" in a way, but she was probably excited and not thinking too much. She's too young to be fully in control of her sexuality - kids aren't entirely responsible for their actions; they're still learning how to control impulses etc. Arresting this girl is going to make the problem bigger than it was. She simply needs to be told that it's not fair for big kids to make little kids do things with their bodies.
posted by mdn at 10:32 AM on January 13, 2002

Erotic Innocence : The Culture of Child Molesting , by James R. Kincaid , is an excellent--if too heavy in the postmodern jargon at times--on the topic. Here's the kernel of what Kincaid thinks is going on with our current cultural obsession with child molesting:

For a long decade or so, we have been uncovering stories of sexual child abuse in the United States, discovering the alarming reach of these stories, their range and variety, only to have the pendulum swing. Suddenly, we hear that memory is suspect, that accounts of molestation coming from children are dubious, that therapists may be crooks, that Freud himself is wobbling. As we up the voltage and try to deal with the dilemma by more carefully tagging the offenders, the counter-reaction grows as well. How can we locate in this bog a solid place to stand? That the stories proliferate and double back on themselves does not indicate indifference, certainly; but it may suggest that our stories are providing us with something other than solutions.

We are forever assuring ourselves that we are in denial, avoiding the issue; it takes, we say, great courage to speak out on a problem most people ignore or repress. That's an odd diagnosis, considering that these stories come at us (and from us) like killer bees. Take a look at these tales as they circulate and you notice right away two things: their redundancy and their strength. When we locate a good story, which we do every week or so, we chew on it ferociously: Michael Jackson, pedophile priests, recovered memory, six-year-old molesters.

I begin with two preliminary assumptions. The first is that these are stories that are doing something for us: we wouldn't be telling this tale of the exploitation of the child's body if we didn't wish to have it told. The second is that what these stories do for us is to keep the subject hot so that we can disown it while welcoming it in the back door. These are not stories told simply to solve a problem but also to focus and re-state the problem, keep it alive and before us. If the stories we tell about child-molesting were working, we might say, they would extinguish themselves. But maybe one of the reasons we tell these stories is to get the stories told . . .

And here is an excerpt from his book.

Kincaid, whose area of expertise is Victorian lierature, wrote this book out of obsessively following the McMartin Pre-School trial. One could argue that our talk and talk and talk about child molesting is a form of pornography, a cautionary pornography where we can wallow in the imagined details and purify ourselves by attacking our designated hitters, who are both our proxies and the ultimate category of evildoer--after all, who defends child molesters? So to speak, we have it both ways.

This obsession leads to the sickest of accusations. Every parent takes pictures of their babies in the bathtub--only now it can prompt a visit by the cops.

The Victorians were obsessed with children, too. Kincaid and others argue that to describe children as innocents. rather than human beings interested in sex as any adult sans the hormonal drives, puts an eotic charge on childhood right there.

And don't get me started about the daycare sex abuse witch hunts... If Raymond Buckey is innocent, as his jury decided, and as I believe, and yet many of the McMartinPreSchool children who now
'remember' being molested by him, who are the molesters here: the police, the prosecutors, Oprah, the parents?

We march to Frankenstein's castle to kill the monster we stitched together out of our individual collective dark sides, perhaps?

We now teach children to beware of strangers--yet when Dorothy runs away from home, she then meets an old mountebank on the road. Upon his invitation, she climbs into his wagon where he charms her into seeing Auntie Em in his crystal ball in order to persuade her to return home: perhaps we should ban the Wizard of Oz as a threat to children, too?
posted by y2karl at 1:28 PM on January 13, 2002

also finding naked coed tapdancing on cable...

Really? What Channel?? :)~~
posted by jonmc at 4:39 PM on January 13, 2002

Am I mistaken or is that an e-leer-icon?
posted by y2karl at 6:02 PM on January 13, 2002

I can't help but wonder what 'initating sex' is. I know what it is for me, and most of us, but for a 9 year old, and even younger kids?

I remember when I was around 4 or 5 - playing 'doctors and nurses' (as we are wont to call it) with a very close female friend. This probably happened quite often, we spent a great deal of time together. I know at some point it occured to me that her 'bits' and my 'bits' would fit together - she had an innie bit and I had an outie. I can't remember if we ever tried this theory, but we certainly touched and so on.

If 'initiating sex' is going "Hey, your thing would fit in my thing" then it hardly seems as sinister anymore. Either way however, it certainly doesn't seem like the sort of thing that the police are best equiped to handle.
posted by sycophant at 6:18 PM on January 13, 2002

More seriously, here is an academic paper on The Social Construct Of Childhood. I found this on the IPCE Web Site, a Dutch portal that describes itself therein, which I came across today while looking for information on James R. Kincaid, It is an academic site on the topic of pedophilia and it is, as described, decidedly non-judgmental, if not biased in a direction opposite to the current American norm on the topic. While I personally don't endorse the concepts of man-boy, man-girl, woman-boy or woman-girl love, the links page there is open to those who do. Be that as it may, it does have a plethora of academic documentation.

That this site is biased, misguided, misinformed or collectively self-delusional, can be argued--albeit the spectrum of opinions and research presented therein require a considered, serious and complex argument on any of those points--but this is not the product of monsters.
posted by y2karl at 7:09 PM on January 13, 2002

Ok what in the WORLD is wrong with this picture?! I can't believe this. 9 years old! This is incredibly wrong. I can't even begin to think of what... grr. bah. This is just disgusting. I guess this just shows how kids are raised these days.
posted by spidre at 10:41 PM on January 13, 2002

I think we could all learn from other cultures a bit the
!kung attitude to this issue seems more sensible (scroll down to sex marriage & adultery)
posted by roobarb at 5:38 AM on January 14, 2002

Wow. What comments. This is of course guaranteed, by covering such a "touchy" subject. My opinion is that the girl has probably been molested, and that she was acting out based on what she has learned in her life. If she hasn't been molested, then she has certainly been exposed to some age-inappropriate media. I also think that most parents would see this in the story, while most non-parents won't and would question out viewpoint.

My son was involved in a recent tangential event - an older child (5 years older) got him and his friend to fight each other, by telling them to start hitting each other and see who can make the other one "go down" first. Both my son and his friend were very upset by this incident. Where did the older kid get the idea? Hell, probably from watching "fight club" with his parents? Was I pissed? Hell yeah? Would I be just as pissed if some ten-year-old got my five-year-old daughter to try to have sex with some other five or six-year-old? Hell yeah!

It's not like we're some prudes or freaks - we have explained the facts clearly and directly to our children, answered all their questions, and I still don't think it's appropriate for with of them to be attempting to act out adult sexual situations. However, today, I do think that the media sexualizes our children, and what innocence they have is ripped away at a very early age. But home schooling isn't going to prevent it - they'll get it from their perrs somehow, because not everyone in conscientious, and the level is always that of the lowest common denominator.
posted by hurkle at 8:29 AM on January 14, 2002

true....but my kid was pretty disgusted at the teasing, and at the fact that the teacher did nothing about it until i finally got the principal involved.....the principal told me that a lot of these kids saw their older brothers and sisters engaged in "inappropriate activity" right in front of them......sad, I think.

I too always talked to my kids about the subject starting in kindergarden, but none of them appreciated the sexual harassment/sexual acting out that they saw in school. They were much happier away from it.
posted by bunnyfire at 8:53 AM on January 14, 2002

OK, I'm sure these URL's are truncated by some automatic publishing system, but doesn't this filename look mildly ironic?

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/011/region/Girl_9_charged_with_sexual_ass%3A.shtml
posted by campy at 1:32 PM on January 14, 2002