Perspectives on Adolescent Sexual Relations With Older Persons: A Systematic Review of the Literature:
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The older person is often perceived by both those who experienced such relations and by the general population as abusive, even if the relations were consensual at the time: He is seen as exploiting authority and position, whereas the adolescent is seen as lacking real choice. Although at the time the relations may have been perceived positively by the youth, some of the minors involved in the past now reframe them as
abusive. This reframing reflects the conflictual issue of decision-making ability in adolescence.
According to the literature, although adolescents are usually able to understand the
consequences of their future actions as well as adults and are able to perceive the risks of their activities, they still engage in more risky activities than adults do in real-life situations (Defoe, Dubas, Figner, & van Aken, 2015; Padon & Baren, 2011), including substance abuse (Balogh, Mayes, & Potenza, 2013). This conduct, however, is also affected by social context and expected norms. A study on adolescent girls, for example, found that social context and expected norms played a major part in their decision-making concerning relationships with older persons and that the adolescents felt the older partners did not directly force them to have sex, but that they understood this was what expected of them (Fantasia, 2011).
Adolescents perceiving the relationship as a loving one were strongly opposed to its reframing as abusive. Far from the straightforward and inflexible legal definitions of SR, for many of the participants in this review, age gap and being an adolescent were simply not enough to determine criminal abuse (Sahl & Keene, 2010). Social narratives around SR relationships that tend to portray a young, naive victim exploited by an older offender are problematic, since they are not only rejected by many respondents but also reduce the complex phenomenon to a single perspective (Hines & Finkelhor, 2007). According to the just world theory, many people have a strong desire or need to believe that the world is a predictable place where people “get what they deserve” (Lerner, 1980). Therefore, when we encounter evidence to the contrary, we feel intimidated and quickly act to restore justice—in theory or in practice—using a variety of techniques. The common social tendency to frame the minor and the older person stereotypically may serve that need. Such labeling, though, may contradict the perception of the minor involved. In these cases, legal intervention, rather than the SR relations themselves, are experienced as offensive and abusive (Tener et al., 2014).
This review also found, moreover, that even when relations were perceived by minors as offensive and exploitative, legal intervention was still often perceived as harmful. This raises the question whether legal intervention really helps youth in these relations, regardless of how they are perceived. This question becomes even more critical when considering the fact that teen- agers may have a negative perception of law enforcement to begin with, often based on firsthand experience. Indeed, studies in the United States demonstrate that minors labeled as SR vic- tims tend to be undereducated female African Americans living in inner cities (Hines & Finkelhor, 2007; Kandakai & Smith, 2007; Manlove, Ryan, & Franzetta, 2007; Ve ́zina et al., 2011). Minority populations are usually more exposed to surveillance by the authorities (e.g., Brunson & Weitzer, 2009), resulting among other things in higher rates of SR reporting.
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Participants in the articles reviewed also perceived the law as too ambiguous and at times even confusing to read, containing contradictions and double meanings. Indeed, the literature points to the limits of the law, including its unclear definitions, as well as questioned the extent to which SR laws are known, and perhaps more importantly accepted in society, the inconsistency concerning its sanctions, and mandatory reporting issues (Oudekerk et al., 2013; Sachs, Weinberg, & Wheeler, 2008).
To conclude, the review highlights several major issues. First, it reveals that teens’ motivations to enter relationships with older persons are diverse and highlights their need for emotional support that is unavailable from other sources in their lives. It also reveals that these relations are perceived by the minors involved and members of the public in diverse ways, as opposed to the rigidly dichotomous perspective of the law. They may be perceived as abusive, out of the assumption that youth are unable of judicious decisions regarding sexual relations. Alternatively, they may by perceived as mutual and noncoercive relations, rejecting that implicit assumption. The literature also discusses possible negative consequences of such relations, tending to emphasize individual rather than familial, social, and cultural factors. It focuses on contextual factors affecting the perception of these relations, mainly in articles on the effect of gender and age of both the younger and older person, with mixed findings. Other possible contextual factors such as sociocultural conditions are largely absent from the literature.
As noted on the paper, limitations include differences in methodologies between the papers reviewed, and the fact that the sample was from he Anglosphere (i.e., The US, The UK, and Australia), limiting the applications of the findings in non-Anglo cultural settings.
