By Kieron Murdoch | Opinion Contributor

As Antigua and Barbuda joins the rest of the world in observing 16 Days of Activism on Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) we picked up our phones and opened our laptops this week to news of a tattoo artist being sentenced on multiple counts of what might more commonly be called statutory rape against at teenage girl.

It is a stark reminder that unlawful and abusive relationships between older males and female minors remain a pervasive social problem in our society.

Regarding the case in question, we commend the efforts of the investigators, prosecutors, judicial officers, social workers, and all others who may have had a part to play in ensuring accountability. Similarly, we hope that the victim and her family are able to move forward from this episode with compassion and support from those around them.

Speaking more generally, our society too easily accepts the idea that it is okay for older males to engage minor females in sexual and intimate relationships.

Many of us can attest to going through our school days hearing that this bus driver was “checking” some schoolgirls who would use the bus, or that some man in the community was “going with” someone who was a minor. Or when a girl runs away from home, it is normal for everyone to say she has “gone to stay with a man.”

Our attitude needs to shift from one of “it happens” and “so it go” or “it’s not my business” to one of intolerance. We show intolerance for a great many things based on our moral views and religious upbringing, but when it comes to protecting children from harmful relationships with predatory adults, suddenly the mantra is “so it go”.

We need to etch it into our collective consciousness that it is never right for minors to be in so-called “relationships” with adults. In this jurisdiction, the law has established 16 years of age as the legal age of consent. There are many who argue that even this is too low. Even when a person is 16 most right-thinking people abhor the idea that it is acceptable for such persons to be in relationships with older persons.

But we are worse than that. We are a society where it is far too normal for 15-year-olds, 14-year-olds, 13-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and 11-year-olds to be the object of sexual interest for grown-ass men.

Worse, it at times does not appear to be an interest that a person has to conceal. To some extent, a person so inclined can speak openly in certain company, making lewd remarks about children, or showing undue and salacious interest in early adolescents, or even pre-adolescents, knowing that the company they keep either endorses, or at the least, condone it.

What we colloquially call “statutory rape” is officially charged as “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor” or some similar crime. In various jurisdictions, there is controversy around such laws depending on how they are applied and their impact in different circumstances of non-forcible, voluntary sexual relationships between adults and juveniles.

Sometimes the controversy is created due to concerns over whether consensual sexual activity between peers above and below the age of consent should be criminalized, whether underage adolescents voluntarily engaging in sex should be considered victims, and whether the laws are fairly enforced.

For example, while one would not approve of a 15-year-old female and a 17-year-old male being in a sexual relationship, few would conclude that it ought to be treated as severely as in a case where the male was 20, or 25 or 30. Nevertheless, the law exists to protect minors from the harmful and dangerous inclinations of some adults to engage children and adolescents in intimate relationships.

Children are incapable of full and informed consent because they are not mature enough to fully understand the implications and the dynamics of what they are doing, as intelligent as many youth may seem. That is why generally, the preference is that minors abstain from intercourse altogether until later adolescence.

This point in the discussion is another opportunity for us emphasize the potential benefits of having continuous, age-appropriate, comprehensive sexual education in our primary, secondary and tertiary institutions, which aims to build knowledge and sensitivity in our young people surrounding complex issues that they will not otherwise have a guaranteed opportunity to understand in a controlled environment under the supervision of qualified professionals.

We must also do more to educate and sensitize our young men (who will become older men) about why they should seek after persons in their age group and why they ought to leave minors alone.

It is still far too common to hear of older teenage boys in so-called relationships with vastly younger girls in their early teens or younger.

We are failing as a society if a male can reach the age of 17, 18, or 19 and believe that it is appropriate for them to be in a relationship with someone who is 14, 13, or 12 years old. But this happens a lot. We abandon young people to sexual socialization based on porn, predators, and peers, and what little serious conversations the average parent will consistently have with their children on subject matters that are often too taboo in a familial setting for some parents to want to raise.

These include what is and is not consent; the danger of adding alcohol and mind or mood altering drugs to sexual encounters; the impact of age gaps in intimate relationships; why adults and minors should not be in relationships; and the risks and consequences of making and sharing sex tapes, nudes, and self-involved lewd content.

They also include the dangers of transactional sex and why to avoid it and never pressure someone into it; the importance of mutual respect, boundary setting, communication, and honesty in relationships; how recognize grooming and abuse, and being aware of the impact of online sexual media on one’s attitudes and conceptions about sex and sexuality.

And remember, education is more than reminding a child not to do something, reminding them of the consequences of an action, or threatening them with punishment if they violate a prohibition placed on them. We should actually be aiming to build a set of positive values and strongly held opinions about sex in our young people that reflect maturity, accountability, respect, and self-respect.

We take our hat off to any parent who manages to get all of that into their child’s head through routine and open exchanges on the topic of intimate relationships and sexual activity, the reason being that most parents and guardians may only graze the surface, and may stick to the basics such as using protection, staying away from drugs and alcohol, and avoiding teenage pregnancy.

Interestingly, we are willing to bet good money that far more daughters than sons get to have these conversations. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that boys will have far fewer conversations with their parents or guardians designed to educate or sensitize them about sex as compared to their female counterparts.

Largely, we seem to leave adolescent males to their own devices hoping that they will turn out to be model partners who value and understand consent, who have respect for their partners and do not objectify them, and who abhor violence, deceit, or coercion as a means of getting to intercourse, and who have a level of sensitivity and awareness around critical social issues such as sexual violence and intimate partner violence.

It is also important for us to put more effort into building up our girls to understand the dangers to themselves and consequences of being in such relationships, to be aware of the signs of grooming and abuse, to seek out partners within their age group, and to value themselves for attributes other than their sexual appeal or availability for sex.

That last point is important. We tend to bombard girls with a hodgepodge of either highly liberal or highly conservative cues to follow in terms of the values they ought to manifest and how they ought to behave. We surround them with language, events, mass media, and adult behavior that reinforces the notion that their primary value as females is as a sexual object.

We then tell them the polar opposite – that they should build self-esteem and a deeper sense of self-worth, as opposed to finding primary validation in securing the sexual and intimate attention of males. Girls today wade through a deluge of highly sexualized often raw content that reinforces the sexual objectification of females, especially young females, near their age. What impact does it have? Males wade through this content too – what effect does it have on how they view women?

We come back to where we began – the fact that we are observing 16 Days of Activism. Let us keep a special focus on our young people during this time, and beyond, and take heed of subtle ways in which exploitation and abuse (violence) are meted out to girls in our society as part of a cultural norm of pubescent female exposure to sex through adult males. Let us commit ourselves to changing that culture and allowing children to be children.

About the writer:

Kieron Murdoch worked as a journalist and later as a radio presenter in Antigua and Barbuda for eight years, covering politics and governance especially. He is an opinion contributor at antigua.news. If you have an opinion on the issues raised in this editorial and you would like to submit a response by email to be considered for publication, please email staff@antigua.news