The Herald Sun reported that a 24 year old man pled guilty to multiple charges for sexually abusing a 15 year old girl.
Sensationalising a story about child sexual abuse while also minimising the crime is quite a trick, but they managed it. Calling him a “Pizza Delivery Fiend” makes it sound like he could just be a really really fast pizza delivery guy, not a man who sexually abused a child. Labelling him a “fiend” buys into the monster myth that protects too many men who sexually abuse children. Sexual predators and rapists don’t look like monsters. They just look like men.
It’s legally tricky to call it rape when the charges for which he was convicted were sexual abuse of a child – although rape is the word for any sexual activity without consent and a 15 year old cannot consent to anything with a 24 year old. So I get why they didn’t use that word. But it wasn’t “child sex”. There is no such thing as adults having “sex” with children. There is only rape and sexual abuse.
She didn’t “fall pregnant”. She was sexually abused and HE is responsible for her being pregnant. Erasing him from the crime is abhorrent, ignorant, and false. We should be well past this kind of reporting by now.
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Links to the report and other sources are in the OP on my Patreon patreon.com/JaneGilmore
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