The Word Is “Rape”

I recently read a rather horrific story about a teen girl held captive that brought up some serious concerns I have with the way the media covers rape. Take a look at this coverage from the Christian Science Monitor:

A teenager held in captivity since early November was found Wednesday in the Missouri home of a 41-year-old man whom she had met online.

The story is a chilling reminder to parents and teens that people encountered online are not always who they purport to be. Child safety experts advise parents to speak bluntly with children about the risks of becoming involved with strangers online.

Police say Christopher Schroeder of Marthasville, Mo., coaxed the 15-year-old girl from her Cleveland home on Nov. 8 and transported her 600 miles away.

Over the course of a month, Mr. Schroeder destroyed the victim’s mobile phone then had had sex with her multiple times, according to law enforcement officials.

It’s really kind of horrifying how often news articles use the term “had sex with” when the correct term was “raped.”

In this specific situation, the man was 41 and his victim was 15. The age of consent in Missouri is 17, which means that what took place was rape, period. Beyond that, the article makes it clear that while the girl left home of her own volition, she stayed in the man’s home because she was afraid to leave. And still—still—we read that he “had sex with her multiple times” when in fact he raped her multiple times.  

Words matter, remember? When news sources report that a perpetrator “had sex with” their victim, that affects how people perceive their actions. You don’t have to go far to find headlines like “Man arrested after police say he had sex with 13-year-old girl he met online” or “Cheer Coach Had Sex With Male Teen Say Cops.” “No jail for babysitter, 21, who had sex with 11-year-old boy in England.” “Man accused of having sex with 11-year-old girl.” “TEXAS POLICE SAY MAN HAD SEX WITH 12-YEAR-OLD GIRL IN PHARMACY RESTROOM.”

And these are all recent articles. I could go on, but I won’t.

We need to get serious about statutory rape. We need to stop pretending that a fifteen year old abducted by a 41-year-old man is anything other than a victim, or that a 13-year-old girl groomed by a 26-year-old man somehow participated in her abuse. How the blazes do we live in a world where the statement “man had sex with 12-year-old girl in pharmacy restroom” is understood as anything but absolute nonsense?! Is it really that hard to type “man raped 12-year-old girl in pharmacy restroom”?

We need to get serious about protecting victims from predators, and that means understanding how predation works. We also need to get serious about not victim blaming children—or anyone, for that matter. In 2010, the New York Times covered the gang-rape of an 11-year-old girl by noting that the girl “dressed older than her age” and that she “would hang out with teenage boys at a playground.”

Can we not do that, please?

Tina Anderson was 15 when she was raped by a church deacon in the late 1990s. She was made to confess to sexual immorality before the entire congregation, as though she had had sex with a boyfriend. Her assailant, a church deacon twice her age, also made a confession, but confessed only to infidelity, as though he had had an affair. Outside of church leadership, no one knew the two confessions were related.

It would be easy to blame what happened to Anderson on religious ideology, but when news articles routinely refer to men “having sex with” girls ages 11 to 15, rather than calling rape rape, religious ideology is clearly not the whole of the problem.

Words matter. We need to call rape rape. We need to stop talking about perpetrators “having sex with” their victims and start calling it what it is—rape.

Note: Ultimately, what makes statutory rape rape is the inability of a child to give meaningful consent. After all, rape pivots on lack of consent, not use of force. The age of consent varies from state to state, but the goal is to determine at what age a child is old enough to give meaningful consent do sex. My goal in this article was to point out that, at the very least, a media source has no excuse to write of an adult “having sex with” a child below the age of consent, because such is legally considered rape regardless of other factors. However, I do want to be clear that it is the child’s inability to provide meaningful consent, and not the specific legal age set in a given state, that makes rape rape in situations like those described in this post.