TVNZ, undoubtedly with the best of intentions, ran a story about men paying to rape children. They framed it as a story about children “selling themselves”.
The children in this story are not the problem. If they are 12 and 13 year olds as the story claims, they cannot make the choice to have sex with adults.
If men in New Zealand are paying for the opportunity to rape children, even in the unlikely event that they are paying the children themselves, the problem is not what the children are doing. It’s what the adults are doing.
If children are receiving money from men who rape them, the issue is how they ended up in a situation where they had no other alternatives than to accept money under such circumstances.
There are a lot of different issues here, all of them serious and deeply concerning. But the children involved are the victims not the perpetrators of crimes.
FixedIt is an ongoing project to push back against the media’s constant erasure of violent men and blaming of innocent victims. If you would like to help fund it – even $5 a month makes a big difference – please consider becoming a Patron
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