Children Having Children

April 25, 2007 7:50 AM

A nine-year-old girl had a baby; her rapist gets twenty-five years. She is not the youngest mother: Lina Medina bore a child at age five. Other young mothers.
posted by Robert Angelo (68 comments total)

Yep. In HS I was sorta friendly with a neighbor girl who I thought was just sorta small but was about as developed as any of the girls my age (and was real tough for her age; smoked, drank beer with her older brother, cussed). When she had a birthday, I was taken aback to learn she'd turned twelve; I'd've guessed fifteen, maybe sixteen. Her brother chuckled: "Sh*t, man, she's been on the rag since she was nine and a half."
posted by pax digita at 7:57 AM on April 25, 2007

that is unbelievable! seriously. five and nine years old. sad too of course.
posted by 2shay at 8:05 AM on April 25, 2007

I have that distinct tase of bile in my mouth. This must be rottenfilter.

A post like this, with little commentary about or insight into the phenomenon smacks of sensationalism, but more importantly in this case, sexulaized exoticism. Or maybe it's just that yucky.

Oh, and welsome to the "age ain't nuthin' but a number" crowd.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 8:09 AM on April 25, 2007

This--written about a NINE YEAR OLD (that's elementary school, 4th or 5th grade tops)--makes me want to weep:

"Her father said the pregnancy and Caesarean section means the victim can never enjoy her childhood again because every time she dresses she can see the stretch marks and surgical scars."

---------------

Child rape is already such a hideous crime; this just seems unbearable.


.
posted by availablelight at 8:13 AM on April 25, 2007

A girl is to become Britain's youngest mother after becoming pregnant at 11. The girl smokes 20 cigarettes a day despite being eight months' pregnant. She conceived aged 11 when she lost her virginity to a boy of 15 on a drunken night out with friends...

Her 34-year-old mother, who gave birth to her youngest child eight months ago, said she was 'proud' of her daughter.

Just. Wow. My mom? Would've been slapping me upside the head SO HARD.
posted by miss lynnster at 8:19 AM on April 25, 2007

This is an OMFG moment. As much as one hears about girls reaching puberty earlier and earlier I can only imagine sad stories like these becoming more common.*Sigh*
posted by MikeMc at 8:22 AM on April 25, 2007

I'm not sure what "sexulaized exoticism" is, exactly, but I am pretty grossed out. If it's possible to be objective about it, there is something kind of remarkable about such a thing taking place. But when you factor in that such pregnancies could really only happen as the consequence of something pretty damned nasty and evil, it...yeah, you know...ugh. I would not miss this thread.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:22 AM on April 25, 2007

My borther said your grandma is too damn young:

25. 25 year old grandmaz:

"A 25 year-old grandmother, a 14 year-old man-of-the-house, a mother of two in an abusive relationship, a 10-month old baby that dies of pneumonia in a public-housing high-rise: Linda Burton can tell you the stories of each of these families with vivid detail."

24. 24 year old grandmaz:

"The age of sexual consent in Grenada is 16, but you have scores of children born every year to girls as young as 12, and no one is being prosecuted," Peters said. "We have here what we call 'the 24-year-old grandmother syndrome.'"

23. Google awaits.

22. 22 year old grandmaz:

"In my professional life, I have met a 22-year old grandmother. Yes, that's correct - 22 years old and a grandmother. I couldn't count how many 30-year old grandmothers I've met. They are a dime a dozen in the inner cities of North America."

21. 21 year old grandmaz:

"There was a 21 year old grandmother. Yes, grandmother. She had a baby when she was 11 & her daughter gave birth at aged 10."

20. 20 year old grandmaz:

"My borther said that knew a 20 year old grandmother. that didnt make no sese to me"

19. 19 year old grandmaz:

"Harris County Commissioner Steve Raddack I met a 19-year-old grandmother the other day. She gave birth to her daughter when she was 9 years old, and now her 10-year-old daughter is a mother."

18. Google awaits.

17. 17 year old grandmaz:

"I was curious to see what the youngest grandmother was. 17 year old grandmother!"
posted by dgaicun at 8:23 AM on April 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

Did you have to post this before I had had my breakfast? I feel sick to my stomach.
posted by fenriq at 8:30 AM on April 25, 2007

It doesn't need to be said, but since words are cheap on the intertubes:

THIS IS STRAIGHT FUCKED UP.
posted by smackwich at 8:39 AM on April 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

Ambrosia Voyeur : I didn't post it to be sensationalistic. It was one of the OMFG moments when it was reported this morning. I have no insight, just a sense of sadness.
posted by Robert Angelo at 8:42 AM on April 25, 2007

A post like this, with little commentary about or insight into the phenomenon

Non-editorializing on the front page is a feature, not a bug.
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 8:48 AM on April 25, 2007 [3 favorites]

Her father said the pregnancy and Caesarean section means the victim can never enjoy her childhood again because every time she dresses she can see the stretch marks and surgical scars.

Yeah, that's wierd, because I would have thought that being in a year-long sexual relationship (consent doesn't even enter into the picture) with a pedophile might screw you up more than stretch marks and surgical scars. But maybe that's just me.
posted by mkultra at 8:52 AM on April 25, 2007

Well, here in Cleveland some moronic 15-year-old already on probation tried to rob a guy using a gun on the guy's front porch and ended up getting shot himself. Guess who got the obligatory candlelight vigil?

(Answer = not the guy who defended himself from said punk and his friend)

Guess what got blamed?

(Answer = rap music, duh).

Guess who complained about the guy not being charged?

(Answer = the punk's clueless family and friends)

So really, children having children doesn't surprise me at all these days. What surprises me is that fewer parents are taking the path my mom and miss lynnster's mom would've taken -- some serious upside-the-head-smacking when bad behavior is in evidence. Oh, that's right. It's easier to blame the rappers for thuggery and hypersexualization in our society. Silly me.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 8:52 AM on April 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

Non-editorializing on the front page is a feature, not a bug.

OMGWTFBBQ 9 yr olds, dude!!!1
Naked 5 yr old pix!!
...not a feature.

On the other hand, it's an intriguing topic, but not just to point and gape. To break out my comment about sexualized exoticism, I somewhat fear that coverage of these occurrences without careful examination of their significance simply puts forth the idea that very young girls can be sexually matured enough to be mothers, which in a small, sick way could encourage their portrayal as sex objects. I am reminded of the (hopefully straw) folks who argue toward the justification of rape by way of biology.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 9:07 AM on April 25, 2007

Just. Wow. My mom? Would've been slapping me upside the head SO HARD.

I'm sure this will get me labelled as a "politically-correct" moron by some, but I don't see how the above response would achieve anything for the child. It's just going to drive her away and make her less likely to seek the proper avenues of support, as well as adding to the pain, confusion and loneliness that she's likely to be feeling in that situation. As well, it's hardly going to solve the pregnancy or the problems that led to her getting pregant.

Is it really so outrageous for the mother to give her daughter support in this very strange and unfortunate situation? I don't think so and I'd say that's all she was trying to do in saying she was 'proud' of her daughter. The journalist may have framed the quote in such a way as to suggest that the mother was 'proud' of her daughter's lifestyle and decisions up to that point, but I'm going to assume that's an unfair and sensationalistic reading.

In the same way, I am not defending the girl's actions in getting into this situation and it was pretty obviously a bad series of mistakes. But I think we should be cautious of further marginalising and alienating these children even if the physical fact of their pregancy disturbs us.
posted by Drexen at 9:15 AM on April 25, 2007

Sadly, little girls getting pregnant is a story as old as mankind. Don't forget that in the Victorian era-- an era noted for its sexual repression--child prostitutes were ubiquitous. As to my own experiences, when I was in Jr. High in the early 70's I took gymn with a 12-year-old whose stomach took on the contours of a basketball just before she disappeared from the school. It wasn't until years later that I figured out she was pregnant. (It never occurred to me that one of my peers could get pregnant.)
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 9:23 AM on April 25, 2007

I see your point about journalistic framing, Drexen, and perhaps the mother did make a statement that was more in line with the fact that she's proud of how her daughter has handled the situation, whatever... but the big picture, if you ask me, is that there are an awful lot of kids whose parents don't give a robot's rat's ass about what they're up to, and once they've done something stupid or outrageous, they don't care, they just want to pass the buck. In short, they don't want to be parents at all. And the non-parents of society are just as bad when they enable the parents to pass the buck by blaming victims, not perpetrators.

What miss lynnster and I were saying about our own parents, if you want to expand the soundbite out to full size (and correct me if I'm framing YOUR comment incorrectly, miss lynnster) is that our parents cared enough about us and our actions to take corrective measures where necessary that, in the end, caused us to grow up to not be 24-year-old grandmas or armed assaulters.

I don't want to marginalize pregnant teens. Nine years old, though? Who wants to bet her sex ed, if indeed she had any, was of the Bush administration's abstinenceabstinenceabstinence party line? And that she was never told it's not only ok to take responsibility for your own body, but that another person -- the guy who knocked her up -- did not have the right to a. do it or b. tell her not to tell anyone about it?

By that same token, who's out there telling the kids like the one I referenced that shooting people is not ok, and armed robbery is not ok? No one. It's much much easier to blame the rappers...which is of course what happened in all the news coverage here. As I said on my blog, oh yeah -- Eazy-E texted the kid from the great beyond and told him to hold up a man at gunpoint.

There's far too little personal responsibility anymore, both for ourselves and the children some of us are raising.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 9:27 AM on April 25, 2007

Ugh. This is hard for me to even read, much less clicking the links...
posted by chuckdarwin at 9:38 AM on April 25, 2007

Who wants to bet her sex ed, if indeed she had any, was of the Bush administration's abstinenceabstinenceabstinence party line?

Oh, for heaven's sake, not everything in this world is the president's fault. Browse through xanga or teen mom message boards some time. There are thousands of girls who've had sex ed, they know all about condoms and the pill and HIV (by their own admission), but still make comments like "my boyfriend said I couldn't get pregnant if he pulled out." I can't count how many 14 and 15 year-old girls I've met who got pregnant on purpose because either a) so many girls at school were having babies and they felt left out or b) they wanted a baby, because it would be someone who would love them.
posted by Oriole Adams at 9:41 AM on April 25, 2007

simply puts forth the idea that very young girls can be sexually matured enough to be mothers, which in a small, sick way could encourage their portrayal as sex objects.

Possibly, but not nearly as much as, say, their actual portrayal as sex objects. Still, I don't see why stating the obvious (this is bad, mmmkay) should be a requirement for a post, that not doing so automatically indicates the poster is reflecting a certain mindset ("age ain't nuthin' but a number").

Likewise, noting that certain biological drives may factor into the occurance of rape, especially as societies were just beginning to coalesce, is not in itself a justification of anything. It's just identifying the existence of factor x and theorizing on it's influence of phenomena y. (There are reasons the U.S. was attacked on 9/11. That does not mean we deserved it.)

But the OP didn't even do the theory part. I don't understand your insistence that that indicates anything about his position. (This comment says nothing about my position either, but go ahead and think what you will of me.)
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 9:46 AM on April 25, 2007

In short, they don't want to be parents at all.

Which is why I am horrified that our culture encourages everyone to be parents, whether they want to or not. As someone who doesn't want kids, I get flack all the time from people who think that's just what you do. It doesn't have to be. Many people don't want to be parents or wouldn't be good at it. And we need to start thinking that's ok, cause it is.

Oh, and proper birth control information and good availability of contraception wouldn't help either.
posted by agregoli at 9:51 AM on April 25, 2007

Drexen... I wasn't being literal that my mother would be violent against me if I was in that situation. Lordy. THE POINT IS... my mother would've done damage control on me in seconds flat before I ever became the biggest chain-smoking drunk pregnant mess in junior high.

Case in point, when I was 13 there was a guy who lived in my neighborhood. He was 22. I was raised entirely around adults so I was a lot more mature than most kids. This guy & I became friends & we used to play tennis together.

When my mother found out? I never saw the guy again. NEVER. My mother brought that hammer down HARD and ended the relationship then & there. I was so upset, because this guy was my friend. That's all we were, friends! How totally unfair was she!?

But now? I'm not so upset that she did that. I'm impressed & thankful that she was taking care of me. Because see, now I have a clearer perspective when I remember dressing up to meet him with butterflies in my stomach... him staring at me and telling me things like "I wish my girlfriend was as cool as you are"... him complimenting me and buying me little presents. Those are all things that are great for a grown up woman to experience, but shouldn't be happening between a 13 year old girl and a 22 year old man. Period.

Thanks to that experience, I am just pretty confident that my mom would've set me straight on what was okay behavior looooong before I was the town's drunk, chainsmoking, preteen whore.

I now see that if my mom hadn't stopped it, the guy was very probably going to turn things sexual. And the truth was, at 13 it was really not something I would've ever been ready for. At 13 my idea of sex was still very innocent and romantic. It wasn't the actual act of it. Some men like to think that little girls know what they are doing when they turn guys on. But from my experience I beg to differ. I can tell you that while I was a cute girl, I was never teasing anyone or looking for sex. The idea of actual sex scared the hell out of me... to me the excitement was just somebody making me feel special and important. Unfortunately, that can easily be exploited.
posted by miss lynnster at 10:02 AM on April 25, 2007 [6 favorites]

Uranus: I haven't made any assertions about the poster, for Pete's sake. I just thought the post would've benefitted from some insight above and beyond examples, to avoid the possibility of immature intellectual response, i.e. "age ain't nuthin' but a number."
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:03 AM on April 25, 2007

Oh, for heaven's sake, not everything in this world is the president's fault.

Don't. Sound. So. SURE.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:08 AM on April 25, 2007 [5 favorites]

me: Who wants to bet her sex ed, if indeed she had any, was of the Bush administration's abstinenceabstinenceabstinence party line?

Oriole Adams: Oh, for heaven's sake, not everything in this world is the president's fault.

I didn't say it was. Rather, that his administration's policy on sex ed is more childish and naive than those Xanga profiles you reference. I don't know when you were in middle school (for me it was the mid to late 80s), but we got Actual Real Live Sex Ed back then, complete with terrifying (to pro-lifer types, anyway) Condom on the Banana Hijinks.

We were told that if we went ahead and had sex that we should be responsible and use condoms or birth control, that otherwise we risked getting pregnant -- heck, you want a scary Message From God^TM kinda moment? When I lost my virginity, we accidentally rolled over on the remote, which turned on Oprah, who happened to be talking about teen pregnancy! And we were told it was ok to talk to an adult about these things, that even if we couldn't approach our parents, we could talk to a school nurse, counselor, whatever.

Today, we get this:

Ronca had been having sex with the girl for about a year, and told her not to tell anyone, according to arrest warrants.

Would she have perhaps opted to obtain birth control during that year if she'd had better sex ed? I like to think so. See, for example, this article. Among the tidbits:

[then-U.S. Surgeon General David] Satcher's recommendations came in a report titled "Call to Action to Promote Sexual Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior." The report summed up a two-year study and recommended many things that upset Bush and his conservative supporters. Bush has no intention of reading it.

La la la la I can't hear you!

The study complains that a "code of silence" cloaks sexual issues. "Society's reluctance to openly confront issues results in a number of untoward effects," the report said. The silence impedes sexual health and stands in the way of communication between parents and children and between sex partners, the report said. Ignorance, the report adds, may encourage high- risk sexual practices. Fleischer said Bush believes that the "best way" to prevent pregnancy and to avoid disease is sexual abstinence.

Society's reluctance to openly confront issues results in a number of untoward effects, indeed. The Bushies have shoved their heads right under the sand on this topic, and instead of the sex ed that could've possibly prevented this pregnancy, again, I'm willing to bet this girl had none or the fundie-approved abstinence-only b.s., since she's practically only been alive as long as this administration's been in office.

Short and sweet award goes to agregoli: Oh, and proper birth control information and good availability of contraception wouldn't help either.

I'm not denying there are plenty of girls who choose the dumbass cop-out route of "oh, my boyfriend told me he'd pull out" despite having sex ed classes. But I think that overall, the quality of these classes have gone down since my day (insert creaky grandma bones noise here) and it's the kids who suffer.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 10:27 AM on April 25, 2007

I know it's trite, but I couldn't pass up pointing out this line from Uranus's link about hypersexualizing toddlers for beauty pageants:

One mother told Levey: "I know people who have spent so much on pageants, they lost their trailers."
posted by lostburner at 10:28 AM on April 25, 2007

Don't abort, drive an import.
posted by phaedon at 10:31 AM on April 25, 2007

bitter-girl.com: Who wants to bet her sex ed, if indeed she had any, was of the Bush administration's abstinenceabstinenceabstinence party line?

Um. OK, I'm not a fan of abstinence-only sex-ed, be it Bush's or anyone else's... but I don't that has any bearing on the nine-year-old. She was being sexually abused, for almost a year, by someone nearly three times her age. It's not exactly the same as two consenting, but ignorant, teens/tweens not knowing how to use a condom.

And that she was never told it's not only ok to take responsibility for your own body, but that another person -- the guy who knocked her up -- did not have the right to a. do it or b. tell her not to tell anyone about it?

Maybe she was taught those things, maybe she wasn't. None of us know what kind of mind games her abuser used. Maybe the girl's parents did teach her those things, but she was starting to rebel. Sensing the rebellion, the abuser might have used some sort of "They're just telling you that to oppress you" angle.
posted by CKmtl at 10:37 AM on April 25, 2007

This is part and parcel of what happens when societies choose to eroticize children. (Pictures probably NSFW - not pr0n per se, just very upsetting. Some context.)
posted by adamgreenfield at 10:45 AM on April 25, 2007

they wanted a baby, because it would be someone who would love them.

Note to self: ramp up number of times I hug my kids and tell them I love them, from "several times a day" to "so much that they can't breathe."
posted by davejay at 11:06 AM on April 25, 2007 [2 favorites]

Oh, and proper birth control information and good availability of contraception wouldn't help either.

I see my statement above was wrong - I meant to say "hurt" instead of help, but perhaps it was taken sarcastically in which case it amounts to the same thing.
posted by agregoli at 11:12 AM on April 25, 2007

Um. OK, I'm not a fan of abstinence-only sex-ed, be it Bush's or anyone else's... but I don't that has any bearing on the nine-year-old. She was being sexually abused, for almost a year, by someone nearly three times her age. It's not exactly the same as two consenting, but ignorant, teens/tweens not knowing how to use a condom.

No, it's not the same. You're right. But -- feel free to pile on for the "you're conflating the issues" argument -- this is what we get when we

a. eroticize children
b. gut our sex ed programs
c. imply, through both the general culture and the legal climate, that women

i. don't have the right to control their own bodies
ii. are "asking for it"

Maybe she was trying to rebel, sure. Maybe she was in the "my daddy is distant and I'm gonna have a baby who'll love me" camp. But more likely, she didn't have the right education. Even worse are the parents who -- in the ultimate head-in-the-sand maneuver -- don't tell their kids anything about sex until the teen years because they couldn't possibly be sexually active this early... Yeah. No.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 11:22 AM on April 25, 2007 [2 favorites]

bitter-girl.com: feel free to pile on for the "you're conflating the issues" argument

I'm not saying it to beat down your points, because I generally agree with them. I just think you're choosing the wrong incident(s) upon which to grandstand.

Your points [a] through [ci-cii] really have nothing to do with the sexual abuse of a nine-year-old whose ovaries happened to start working a tad early. Which is the incident that you pointed to from the beginning.

Those points may have some bearing on the eleven-year-old British girl (but then it's not really Bush's fault, unless he's been puppet-mastering British domestic sex ed policies). Even in her case, your [ci-cii] points may not be all that relevant... Teaching 11yo girls that they have the right to control their bodies could result, unintentionally, in a few of said 11yos thinking "Oh, yeah? Well I want to be a drunken, chain-smoking, preteen whore!" All I mean by that is that it's not necessarily the case that she was unwillingly coerced into drinking, getting high, and fucking. There's probably more at play there than cultural / legal woman-oppressing.

Maybe she was trying to rebel, sure. Maybe she was in the "my daddy is distant and I'm gonna have a baby who'll love me" camp. But more likely, she didn't have the right education.

The Right Education, by itself, won't stop sexual abuse. There's a lot more going on in the dynamic between a long-term abuser and a victim than the victim's lack of certain kinds of knowledge.
posted by CKmtl at 11:52 AM on April 25, 2007

Regarding the abstinence-only education programs mentioned in this thread (most recently here) -

In Arizona, outside contractors (usually faith-based) are brought into the schools to conduct the abstinence-only education. Other groups (like Planned Parenthood) were not prevented (by law or whatever) from coming into the schools and doing the same thing, except by school districts that choose not to allow it.

In a couple of school districts I know of, the abstinence-only education programs weren't allowed into the schools either. But this wasn't because they were blinding kids to contraception or how to have "safe sex", but because the (loudest) parents of the kids in the schools felt their children were too young to receive ANY sex education, abstinence or not. (I'm talking middle schools here.) In other districts, parents barred the abstinence-only education programs because they felt the schools shouldn't be teaching sex ed at all -- that the onus of the discussion is on the parents themselves.

Research shows that some parents are deluded into thinking that adolescents aren't sexually inquisitive, so those parents will likely be young grandparents.

I only hope that news stories like these help to inspire parents to discuss sex with their children at a younger age than what is occurring now.
posted by parilous at 12:17 PM on April 25, 2007

OP here, just glancing in. I didn't realize what a muddle this would touch off, or I would have provided some additional context and links as the First Comment. I actually thought that the story of Lina Medina was the most interesting yet saddening part of this, with her child raised as her brother, the US press reports at the time (referenced in the Snopes link), and so on. What a life she has had. Wikipedia indicates that she is still alive and living in Lima, but has refused interviews as recently as 2002. Understandably so... Also, yes, some of the images are NSFW and I'm sorry that I forgot to include that label.

On the broader discussion, there's a tangential thread in AskMe today: Teen brother, infant sister, Mom worries because the brother is reading incest porn including "teen sisters." Compare and contrast.
posted by Robert Angelo at 12:23 PM on April 25, 2007

additional context, what a great idea! :)
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 1:50 PM on April 25, 2007

Who wants to bet her sex ed, if indeed she had any, was of the Bush administration's abstinenceabstinenceabstinence party line?

I don't like Bush, either, but did you read the article at all?

"Ronca had been having sex with the girl for about a year, and told her not to tell anyone, according to arrest warrants."

YEAH MAN CHILD RAPE IS TOTALLY BUSH'S FAULT. HURRRRR
posted by Mikey-San at 2:06 PM on April 25, 2007

And as if the early onset of puberty and attendant untimely pregnancies, emotional scarring, unwanted babies, etc. weren't awful enough, there seems to be a link between early menarche and childhood obesity, according to a BBC report.
posted by rob511 at 3:02 PM on April 25, 2007

Just what Metafilter needs, a whole thread chock full of CHILD PORNOGRAPHY, that is, prurient "NSFW" stories and stories and pictures of people under the Age of Consent. Somebody even had the sociological insight that this very exciting problem is somehow associated with people who live in trailers. But still, in all this neovictorian tut-tutting titillation, nobody's brought up Muhammad's contribution.
posted by davy at 3:08 PM on April 25, 2007

YEAH MAN CHILD RAPE IS TOTALLY BUSH'S FAULT. HURRRRR

Have you missed my points entirely? Had she had proper sex ed and not just the lame excuse for it that passes these days, she probably would have been more likely to report this abuse, or at least REALIZE that it's abusive. Instead we get the guilt-shame-abstinence-only parade that tries to shame girls into thinking things like this are their fault. Which, duh, they're not.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 3:15 PM on April 25, 2007

A father should not announce to the world -- or to anyplace that his daughter might hear -- that his daughter will never enjoy her childhood.

I'm not saying that's the worst thing that went on here. But that's fucked up.
posted by Flunkie at 3:36 PM on April 25, 2007

Had she had proper sex ed and not just the lame excuse for it that passes these days, she probably would have been more likely to report this abuse, or at least REALIZE that it's abusive.

Aren't the really early "Good Touch, Bad Touch" / "No-No Area" lessons rather common? Regardless of the sex-negative / sex-positive, abstinence / safer-sex, shameful / normal status of the school's sex ed policies, I mean.

Instead we get the guilt-shame-abstinence-only parade that tries to shame girls into thinking things like this are their fault. Which, duh, they're not.

I hope you're only specifying 'girls' in this case because all the examples so far have been girls. And not because you're hinting that only sexually abused girls have that shame-guilt thing going on.
posted by CKmtl at 3:43 PM on April 25, 2007

Have you missed my points entirely? Had she had proper sex ed and not just the lame excuse for it that passes these days, she probably would have been more likely to report this abuse, or at least REALIZE that it's abusive.

No, I've missed the statistics that prove your guesstimation. A nine-year-old girl would probably report rape if someone told her to? Well, what about the guy who was telling her not to? Furthermore, he'd been raping her for a year. Who has sex ed classes at eight years of age?

She was REALLY young, and malleable. A monster took advantage of that. For once, something bad isn't George Bush's fault.
posted by Mikey-San at 3:47 PM on April 25, 2007

Heh. I'd just written a long comment about how sex-ed and the "good touch bad touch" schtick aren't the same, and then I previewed and saw that y'all had beaten me to it. Well done.

Still, I agree that blaming her rapist makes a lot more sense than blaming her school district.
posted by nebulawindphone at 4:03 PM on April 25, 2007

I hope you're only specifying 'girls' in this case because all the examples so far have been girls. And not because you're hinting that only sexually abused girls have that shame-guilt thing going on.

Of course not. By no means. But you have to admit that females get the "she was asking for it" schtick turned around on them a hell of a lot more than males do. Unless, of course, I missed that excuse in any of the high profile male/male abuse cases recently...they seem to favor "devil made me do it" instead.

Aren't the really early "Good Touch, Bad Touch" / "No-No Area" lessons rather common?

Not anymore they're not. School districts are overwhelmed with teaching to the test (at least here in the US), and passing the buck on touchy (pardon the unintended pun) issues like sex ed back to the parents.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 4:17 PM on April 25, 2007

But you have to admit that females get the "she was asking for it" schtick turned around on them a hell of a lot more than males do.

Perhaps, when it comes to teens and adult women who have been raped. But I seriously doubt that any normal person, even the most pig-headed misogynist, has ever said that a preteen child was 'asking for it' when they got abused. You can't cry sexism there.

Male rape and/or sexual abuse victims have an equally nasty schtick that they sometimes have to put up with. Instead of "he was asking for it" or "he deserved it, for wearing/doing XYZ", it turns into "c'mon, you must've liked it".

School districts are overwhelmed with teaching to the test (at least here in the US), and passing the buck on touchy (pardon the unintended pun) issues like sex ed back to the parents.

I don't remember exactly when / if my class had the good-touch bad-touch lesson... but isn't it usually, like, in kindergarten or grade 1? There's not much testing to be taught to at that stage...
posted by CKmtl at 4:36 PM on April 25, 2007

At least the rapist went to prison.

If anyone happens to be in the town of Viseu, Para, Brazil, there you can go find a 10 year old mother who is married to the old man, father of the child. A town of 20,000, everyone knows, and everyone just leaves it alone...
posted by iamck at 4:46 PM on April 25, 2007

Well, people are focusing on girls because there's obviously a double standard due to the differences in gender. There's really not many negatives about having sex when you're a guy. It's fun. It's CONSTANTLY coursing through your veins that you want it. For a 13 year old boy to be seduced by an older woman, the general attitude is "good for you!" It's not thought of as a serious thing with many long-term consequences for him. It's not going to scar him. Usually when a boy gets together with an older woman it's more of a teacher thing, where he wants to learn from her and feel like a man. It's generally considered a positive thing that's good for his ego.

Women who seduce younger men generally do so because the boy is giving them attention they crave, not because they were just horny & wanted sex one night. They generally don't objectify young boys with a goal to victimize them and take their innocence away to fulfill their own sexual fantasies and then discard them. Unfortunately, male pedophiles tend to pursue little children exactly for that reason though. Using Mary Kay Letourneau as an example, she's still married to the boy she seduced. Most men who have sex with young girls don't do so thinking they want to be with them for the long term.

As I said above from my personal experience, young girls often aren't interested in the actual physical act of sex so much as they're craving the intimacy & romantic feelings of someone thinking they're special. That feeling of being adored by someone who makes you feel good inside is much more appealing than the act of getting naked. And a lot of times the girls who end up sleeping around with everyone? They're not doing it because they enjoy the sex as much as because they're trying to get attention to balance out some kind of emptiness they feel. As opposed to guys who sleep around who are mostly just trying to appease the testosterone raging through their bodies.

YMMV. Just my take. Can't speak for every female or male, obviously.
posted by miss lynnster at 4:52 PM on April 25, 2007

miss lynnster, that's exactly the schtick I was referring to.

Sure, for some (maybe most) teenage boys it's not a negative thing, whether it's straight or gay sex with an older partner. They may come away from it thinking it was fun and a personal growth experience or whatever. In those cases, they're not likely to report it or want to report it.

Then there's the boys for whom it was a negative experience, and who do or would want to report it... It's in those cases that the "c'mon, you must've liked it... you're a guy! Quit being a pussy!" schtick is just as harmful as the "she must have been asking for it" crap.

Put yourself in the shoes of a teenage boy who isn't comfortable with having been seduced by some older woman. In addition to the usual shame and guilt ("It's my fault, isn't it?"), you're also wrestling with what people will think if/when you decide to tell someone. Instead of it being the girls' "they'll think I was asking for it" (which is another aspect of "it's my fault"), in the boy's case it's "I should have liked it, what's wrong with me? They'll think I'm not a man".

I'm not saying it's necessarily a negative event, or necessarily a positive one... Just that the "boys MUST like it" general attitude is as harmful, in terms of preventing abuse reporting or messing with the heads of those who felt victimized by the sex, as the "girls who get raped had it coming" attitude.

There was a good documentary about male victims of sexual abuse aired on, I think, IFC's Documentary Channel... but I can't seem to find the title.
posted by CKmtl at 5:35 PM on April 25, 2007

Perhaps, when it comes to teens and adult women who have been raped. But I seriously doubt that any normal person, even the most pig-headed misogynist, has ever said that a preteen child was 'asking for it' when they got abused. You can't cry sexism there.

I wish that were true. There was a case back not that long ago where a guy in British Columbia was only given two years' suspended for raping a three year old.

Why? The Socred (extreme conservative)-appointed judge said the girl had been sexually aggressive.

Yeah.
posted by watsondog at 5:57 PM on April 25, 2007

from the news24 article: "A 9-year-old gave birth to a baby girl in the western Amazon jungle, a pregnancy that authorities say may have been the result of rape... 'In some cultures it's natural for girls to have sexual relations after their first menstruation, but now we have to study if that was the case here, if their culture permits this,' Santos said."

I'm not sure how comfortable I am with this moral relativism. My knowledge of developmental psychology is probably not what it should be, but it seems to me that a 9-year old little girl who grows up in an indigenous tribe that "wasn't that isolated, and had a lot of contact" with outside cultures wouldn't be any more mentally and emotionally ready for sex and parenthood than the 9-year old from South Carolina linked in the other article. I'm not sure how the authorities are defining "rape" in this investigation, that it even needs to be questioned whether a crime took place or not.
posted by twoporedomain at 6:22 PM on April 25, 2007

There was a case back not that long ago where a guy in British Columbia was only given two years' suspended for raping a three year old... said the girl had been sexually aggressive.

And watsondog, your story horrified me. I was hoping you misremembered, but I found this article that references the case. Jesus, Judge Vanderhoof is just as guily as that piece of shit rapist.
posted by twoporedomain at 6:33 PM on April 25, 2007

Said twoporedomain: "I'm not sure how comfortable I am with this moral relativism."
posted by davy at 6:33 PM on April 25, 2007

watsondog, consider my mind sufficiently boggled.
posted by CKmtl at 6:47 PM on April 25, 2007

davy: just drop it. No one's biting.
posted by mr_roboto at 6:49 PM on April 25, 2007

Oh, davy, just STFU.
posted by adamgreenfield at 6:50 PM on April 25, 2007

I agree, it's a shtick and not all boys or girls are the same. Totally agree with that. No argument.
posted by miss lynnster at 6:56 PM on April 25, 2007

I'm not comfortable with a prophet marrying a 9 year old 1400 years ago, either. It's a little more constructive to direct our outrage at crimes being committed in our own times though, as those are the ones in which the outcomes are affected by our elected and appointed leaders.

I'm not sure why you singled me out with that link - I've never professed to have any esteem for any religious figure, Muhammad included. I probably am a hypocrite re: moral relativism in some ways, but not that particular one.
posted by twoporedomain at 7:03 PM on April 25, 2007

So we just have to get rid of Muhammed and Bush to stop the pedophiles?!? Awesome!

Poor girl. Ronca will feel the bad touch himself.

I hope she ends up as healthy as is possible after a year of this.
posted by OrangeDrink at 7:06 PM on April 25, 2007

You know, that war on terror isn't going so well. It would be nice to have a new and more sensational epidemic, something worthy of public panic and hysteria. I was thinking "illegal immigration," but you guys might have a better idea. Maybe between the two of us we can marginalize the rest of the news and scare up some political capital...
posted by kid ichorous at 7:07 PM on April 25, 2007

Huh. How did a post about pregnant toddlers end up on the war on terror & illegal imigration? Mefi never ceases to amaze me.
posted by miss lynnster at 7:58 PM on April 25, 2007

twoporedomain, sorry. It had nothing to do with YOU really; I was trying, and evidently failing, to cut throught the denseness in this thread, and you just provided the second opening.

It's a MeTa point really, but I'm not going to bother calling it out there. To wit: picture J. Randon Mefite saying "But I'm not a pedophile, I'm just deeply affected by all this stuff about preteen sexy vixens sexual victims."

Frankly I find the whole subject revolting. Almost as revolting as that War On Terror thing. But hey, I'm game: come on everybody, let's get all all worked up about another Major Social Problem, one that's so much sleazy fun to talk about that it was featured on TV talk shows long before there was a war on. (Does anybody remember "Geraldo"?) Instead of, oh, I don't know, the ongoing war in that place where camel jockeys are, and that kinda Chinese place right next too it with its nukes and assaholahs, And that other place -- what's that country, the one where they make bombs out of heroin? -- where that Obama Hussein guy flew planes into the Statue of Liberty from.

After all, like dios says, Metafilter's not a political site, it's for talking about perversions!
posted by davy at 10:43 PM on April 25, 2007

I shouldn't have been so snide about it, Miss Lynnster, but I'm saying that the dark subject matter here would not be out of place on Fox News. With the war going sour, sex offenders and illegal aliens are filling in for the terrorists. This is part of an endless rotation of scarecrows - school shootings, avian flu, what have you - all nightmarish to a degree but also inflated entirely out of proportion to reality and to civic priorities. The chances of being molested by an illegal alien while on an unsecured college campus notwithstanding, I'd say that too many of us are dying in hospital beds.
posted by kid ichorous at 11:06 PM on April 25, 2007

(Okay, maybe I should've let kid ichorous make pretty much the same point without being so, oh, "snide" about it; I stand implicitly corrected. Those who care enough to require clarification should ask him about it.)
posted by davy at 11:21 PM on April 25, 2007

Wow, I never knew that Robert Angelo was one of those Covert Agents in charge of Issue Obfuscation for the Shadow Government... And damn, I forgot that every discussion, everywhere, has to be about war and healthcare. Thanks davy and kid ichorous for outing him and reminding me!

How exactly does a thread about unusually young mothers, from various countries and from various eras, equate to erecting a scarecrow to attract attention away from war and healthcare? It wasn't framed as "this is a pressing social problem in the US", because only one of the examples is American and the youngest (most sensational) one is from the 40s.

And davy... the "camel jockeys" aren't the only ones venerating young-girl and dirty-old-man relationships. By some accounts, Mary was at most in her early teens when she got hitched to Joseph, who was decades older than her. Nice try, but it doesn't work.
posted by CKmtl at 8:43 AM on April 26, 2007

Gosh, now I feel like Valerie Plame.
posted by Robert Angelo at 9:27 AM on April 26, 2007

You're not good at trolling, Davy.
posted by Snyder at 1:51 PM on April 26, 2007