23 yrd old msgs 16 yr old girl: called her “princess,” “baby” and “precious.”

[The Straight Story]

McKnight Middle School student gets inappropriate text messages from man


A girl under age 16 was skipping class to look at inappropriate text messages from a 23-year-old man at McKnight Middle School, Nov. 13.

The teacher discovered the messages when she confiscated the phone, as it wasn’t allowed during school hours and she was skipping class.

The teacher looked through the messages to see if the girl was using it when she was supposed to be in class.

They weren’t sexual but the man called her “princess,” “baby” and “precious.”

Police told the girl she wasn’t at the age of consent, which is 16. They then used the phone to call the man and warn him not to contact her until she was 16.

http://www.seattlepi.com/sound/412784_sound78164977.html

[TwilightGardener]

1. When I was 15 or 16, I would have been a little skeeved by a 23 year old man being interested in me.

I would have thought, "What's wrong with this dude, that he's chasing teenagers?"

[redqueen]

2. You must have been raised

in a loving and mostly sane household.

Be thankful.

[TwilightGardener]

7. Yep, true, and I am thankful--but it should just be common sense.

I guess some girls feel "grown up" and flattered when an adult is interested, or they have self-esteem problems, I don't know.

[redqueen]

8. It could be low self-esteem...

or sexual abuse in the home. Possibly even only emotional abuse.

[seabeyond]

3. me too. but today adults are playing in the kids world and vice versa. sad. nt

[dugaresa]

4. i agree and now as a mother I would have called the guy myself and

told him to back off if the police had not done it and then I would have a long talk with my daughter.

[Lyric]

6. Which is the opposite of my experience, in that all of my girlfriends

and schoolmates would have been THRILLED at the idea of an "older guy" being interested in them. To be fair, these were mostly impoverished girls who didn't expect to do more than get married and have kids once they were out of school. There's a lot of pressure on low-income rural girls to catch a "good one" and marry young, unfortunately.

[seabeyond]

9. we had a brave young female poster talk about htis one time

giving a totally different persepective on this and was much appreciated. thanks for sharing. i think it does have something to do with it. my highschool was mostly uppermiddle class income. and if a girl dated someone out of high school, frankly, she would have been shunned. was not impressive or cool.

[Mojorabbit]

14. My high school was upper middle class

and it was cool in the early 70's to date older guys. I did it. Shrug. Maybe it is regional differences.

[Matariki]

39. I think that was a 70s thing

same experience here.

[Matariki]

40. self delete

duplicate post, my computer is acting weird.

[TwilightGardener]

12. That's kind of pathetic--I always wonder why the red flags don't go up

for these girls, that they never ask themselves why a grown man is interested in THEM.

[redqueen]

13. Society has pushed that as a norm since forever.

It's defended even here.

So it's not so hard for me to see why many don't question it.

[Lyric]

19. Well I can't speak for everyone everywhere, but based on my experiences

growing up in rural Appalachian poverty, nobody really seems to care about age differences so long as the guy is a local, known by her family, and "one of us." That last part is a loose idea involving clothes, actions, and behaviors that mark him as a working-class "good old boy" who's a known part of the community. When I was 16, I was dating a 23-year-old guy with my Mom's full blessing. He was a friend of the family, well-known in our rural social circle, spent a lot of time drinking and working on cars with my brother and stepfather, his younger sister was my best friend, his Mom was my Mom's best friend, etc. So everyone was perfectly okay with it; in fact, more than okay. Mom hoped I'd marry him. She'd have loved having him as a son-in-law, he had a good-paying manufacturing job, and nobody expected me to go anywhere after high school anyway. I guess the mindset was "This is the best she's gonna get. What's the point of waiting?" How sad is that?

If it had been some outsider from New York with a college degree and "nice" clothes, or if he'd been a LOT older than me (think 29, 30) she'd have been more likely to oppose it, but she had no problem with that particular guy. Weird, but true. And a lot of my friends had similar situations. 15 and 16 year old girls dating 20-something guys was no problem at all so long as the guy was well-known to their family and the poor rural community that they lived in. A lot of them DID go on to marry those guys; and a lot of them ended up divorced with three or four kids by the time they were 25 or 26. It's sad and entirely too common. It's not just the families who are culpable in this, either. Rural churches carry a lot of the blame. There are rural preachers who actually encourage this sort of thing. They'd rather see a 16-year-old married and pregnant than risk that she won't be a sweet little virgin on her wedding night. Those churches will actually come right out and TELL you that. I was married to my ex in one of those churches; the Mt. Clinton Church of God, in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The preacher didn't care how young we were, so long as we had approval from my parents, a marriage license, and a proper "donation" for his services. (We gave him twenty bucks, hah.)

I have no idea what the circumstances are for the girl and the guy in the article, of course, but in regard to low-income girls being more likely to end up dating older guys, I'd say that making higher education more accessible to people of little means would do a lot to dispel the idea that high school is "the end." If I'd have had any serious ambitions of a life beyond working at K-mart and having babies, I'd have been a lot more hesitant to date someone so much older and seemingly "settled." We wound up splitting up after a few months anyway, although I just found a slightly younger guy (21) later and got married at age 18. If he hadn't abused me and forced me to leave him, I'd probably have never gone to college, would never have even left the Shenandoah Valley and lived a life of more than manual labor, cows, and poverty. I'm still not entirely there, but I'm on my way.

We really need to save the low-income kids in America. They're growing up believing that they might as well marry young, breed, work themselves to death for minimum wage and end up with nothing, because that's all there IS for them. It's just not true.

[TwilightGardener]

20. That's kind of a sad story, and I'm surprised at parents who don't

look at a 23 year old as some sort of predator or loser for going after underage girls, no matter how well he's known. Sounds like a lot of these parents just want to be done worrying about their daughters, pass her off to another adult who will be responsible for her--screw the future or any potential she might have. Glad you are finding your way out. BTW, I live in a rural area, and the girls here seem to set their sights low as well--quite a few teenage girls with babies.

[Beer Snob-50]

30. did he know he was dealing with an underage girl?

i did not get that from the article.

[Berry Cool]

22. So true. Girls in small towns are at risk in this country

of marrying too young and settling for too little in life, whether they have money or not. All around them, they see their classmates getting married right out of high school, going to work at Wal-Mart or whatever and having babies. It's hard to fight that trend, even if you have college plans. Especially if you have a boyfriend pushing you to marry him. That's not even counting the ones who get pregnant.

[Lyric]

23. And it's not just small towns; god knows, inner-city low-income girls

are often in the same boat or worse, and the boys (while mostly avoiding the marriage/babies pressures) certainly don't have much support for moving beyond the typical Wal-Mart stock-boy jobs either.

On one hand there's nothing wrong with blue-collar labor, so long as pays well enough to support the family who depends on it. On the other hand, there are fewer and fewer of those jobs available. How many young people spend their whole lives just bitterly struggling to feed themselves, knowing full well that they are just one or two sick-kid episodes from a lost job and hunger/homelessness? Some people think that the answer is to punish the poor even further by cracking down on their behavior, never recognizing that their behaviors are a SYMPTOM, not the main problem. If there were more opportunities, there would be less teenage marriage and pregnancy. If we worried as much about the "moral issue" of poverty as we do about the "moral issue" of sexual conduct, we wouldn't HAVE as much inappropriate and irresponsible sexual conduct to worry about.

It's a vicious cycle. Poverty = less opportunity = resigned lack of ambition = early sex, children, and marriage = poverty. And yet we all want to focus on the spokes without addressing the hub of the problem--poverty, poverty, poverty. And why? Because it's EASIER to say, "Well those people are sexually irresponsible/immoral!" than to recognize and take action to mitigate our own complicity in the impoverishment of the working class. It's faster and simpler to blame the victims for their moral imperfectness, because then we can pretend that their situation is of their own making, and thus "deserved."

Even our MORALS are capitalist now. *sigh*

[MountainLaurel]

24. You hit it dead on, Lyric

I knew a lot of girls in similar circumstances. Hell, when my 60-year-old neighbor got the 16-year-old across the street pregnant, her parents were pleased as punch: Not only did he have a good truck-driving job, but he was also getting his pension from the mines. And thus he could contribute to the pot of income that supported the extended family.

[RoseMead]

25. Your experience sounds familiar

When I was 14 through 15 years old, I was seeing a guy who was 6 years older than me. In my case, my parents opposed it, and it didn't last. But another classmate of mine was dating a someone with the exact same age difference, and they later married and are still married today, happily as far as I know. As I remember it, dating someone that much older was viewed as slightly unusual, but not necessarily a bad thing (this was in the 1980's).

On the other hand, some of the other posts here are familiar to me, too. While we were solidly middle class, I was raised in an emotionally abusive family, and I had very low self esteem. I was desperate to feel loved, and this guy was nice to me. He made me feel special. If I had had a different upbringing, if I had felt better about myself, would I still have entered into that relationship? Possibly not. I've spent a lot of time wondering about that.

In the end, I had many relationships over the years, some of them spectacularly bad, and didn't end up getting married until I was in my 30's. How much that first experience played into my later history, I'm not sure.

[RoseMead]

29. Well here's my experience:

When I was 14 I began dating a guy who was 6 years older than me, and the relationship continued for a couple of years, against the wishes of my parents. The first time I told my dad that I thought this guy liked me, my dad's reply was, "Why would he be interested in YOU?"

The problem was that this question was presented to me by a father who was emotionally abusive. By the time the relationship began, I felt so miserable and unloved that I was desperate for someone who cared, or at least appeared to care about me. My dad never said anything further to clarify his question, so it came across as he was saying I was somehow unworthy. What should have been a reasonable question was seen as an attack when viewed through the lens of an abusive parent-child situation.

Of course, I never thought to ask that question myself, because I was just grateful that someone seemed to care about me. WHY didn't matter at the time. Foolish, yes, but true.

[MadrasT]

44. Been there

When a teenage girl feels emotionally abused and unloved and is just made to feel worthless by her parents... the attentions of a young 20-something guy are hard to resist. ("My parents think I'm worthless... but *he* thinks I'm worth *something* and I'm *special*.")

And I grew up in a nice home, in a nice neighborhood, solid middle class, great school district, A student, National Honor Society, college bound, blah blah blah... the whole 9 yards.

I turned out OK. :shrug:

[Matariki]

37. If he was in a band - or looked like he was, I would have been beside myself

or if he was cute. What can I say, it was the 70's and I had a lot of new hormones raging when I was 15.

[Flaneur]

5. Sounds like this was handled appropriately.

"Dude, knock it off."

[apnu]

28. Yeah a rarity these days.

Nice to hear.

[MineralMan]

10. Sounds like this was handled just fine.

When I was 24, there was a 16-year-old girl who had a huge crush on me. We encountered each other on a daily basis. It was flattering, but I told her that I was just way too old for her. She moved on, after being pretty disappointed.

Not everyone that age will reject the possibilities. In a couple of years, it would have been OK. She'd have been 18 and out of school. But it was not OK when she was 16. An 8-year difference in age is nothing if both parties are adults or, at least, of legal age.

In this particular case, it sounds like the family and authorities handled it just fine.

[PVnRT]

11. I still don't know why school officials are allowed to go through the phones of students

I can't help but wonder if some of these principals are hoping to find naked pictures of underage girls.

[Fumesucker]

21. Or boys... n/t

[HughBeaumont]

15. This sounds par for the course in the town I grew up in.

Dudes as old as 23-25 would be scheming on freshman/sophomore girls. Blaaaaah.

[ET Awful]

16. Did he look like this dude?

"That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age. " - Wooderson in "Dazed and Confused"

[HughBeaumont]

26. Allright Allright Allright.

"Hey, I know you . . . we had Geography together . . . heh heh"

[chatnoir]

17. This girl was under 16 and in middle school

And that usually means 11-14 yo.

Pretty sick, IMO, and the 23 yo perv got off lightly (barring he didn't know her age, of course).

As for me I was seriously skeeved at that age when HS upper class guys were interested, let alone a 23 yo. And I came from a pretty unhealthy/messed up home.

[seabeyond]

31. that is what i am thinking. 11-14

[Hardrada]

18. I misread that as 23 year old msgr instead of msgs

and didn't think a monsignor would be that young nor would hitting on young girls be quite accurate.

[JonQ]

27. Title is misleading then

it says he messaged a 16 year old girl, then in the article it says she was under 16. Which is it?

[Fleshdancer]

33. The subject title is wrong....

Her actual age wasn't mentioned, but the article notes that she is in middle school and under the age of 16 which, in that state, is the age of consent.

[JonQ]

35. Yeah, it was confusing at first

it said 16 year old girl, then later it said the cops reminded the guy the age of consent was 16. My first thought was, so what's the legal problem there?

Had to reread it to get the full story.

[Fleshdancer]

36. lol, you and me both. I'm still agitated about one thing in this article though...

The part at the end where it says that the cops called this guy and warned him to not contact her until she was 16. Color me crazy, but if he's trolling for this middle schooler, then maybe they should look into it a little more? I just thought that was odd. Then again, maybe they are looking into it, who knows.

[JonQ]

38. Can't do much else

he hasn't technically committed a crime that we know of.

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Odin2005]

34. Eww, creep!

[paulsby]

41. i had a case where a 14 yr old

started getting all sorts of obscene text messages, and even men sending her photos of their genitalia.

she flipped out and called police.

turns out "somebody" posted an ad on craigslist erotic ads with her name and put a phone # in a jpeg.

i called a few of the potential suitors and they all told the same story, thus there was no criminal intent on their part since the ad did not (obviously) reveal her age.

she suspected a jealous ex-boyfriend. the mother and her didn't want prosecution, so i told her she could get a protective order against him based on past abuse, and if another incident like this happened, then they could decide to prosecute and we could get orders from craiglist for IP address of poster, etc. if they did it again.

with cell phones, email, facebook, etc. there is whol other world of stuff out there for young girls and boys to deal with

[seabeyond]

42. whole other world of stuff out there for young girls and boys to deal with

yup

[Ter]

43. I'm gonna take an unpopular view here, but the police are wrong

He did absolutely nothing illegal, and they can't tell him not to call the girl. Texting a 15 or 16 year old “princess,” “baby” and “precious" violates ZERO laws, nor does it prove he likes her in that way. Hanging out with someone who's underage is not against the law, nor is texting them. 9 years ago, when I was 27, I took a 17 year old girl to Jingleball (Christmas KTU concert at the time). We hung out everyday, and I'm sure I probably called her hun or sweety now and then. Today she is my best friend, and now we are 27 and 37.

[hyphenate]

45. My first sexual encounter was when I was 15 1/2

with a 22 year old. It was alright--we went to "3rd base" and that was it. OTOH, my sister was always promiscuous, and was having sex when she was 12 1/2. She was pregnant at 17.

I think it depends on the maturity level of the people involved. Let's face it: some girls in the world are married off or worse when they're still children, which is horrific.