Catholic Priest: "A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer."

Obviously the guy is trying to make excuses for the bad behavior of his peers and colleagues.

But I will grant this- young people tend to emulate those they admire, and quite often, they admire celebrities and the characters they portray. There are an astonishing number of young actors whose characters do play on the weaknesses of their teachers, coaches, and parents of their friends in order to seduce them. I can think of a slew of sexy babysitter movies where the husband is the dolt who is seduced or blackmailed into a relationship with a young predatory girl. So- a young girl sees this and thinks it’s daring and cool and tries it out- having NO clue of the implications and repercussions of her actions. That’s the big difference, IMO. The adult should be mature enough to understand what is really going on, while a young person is often role-playing without the deeper understanding that maturity and experience bring to truly loving and romantic relationships.

It’s a bit disingenuous to me that there is SO much focus on one avenue that predators use- the church- but where is the outrage about the predators in schools and in Hollywood? Every child in this country is required to attend a school of some sort. A majority of families in this country own and watch hours of television/movies every single day. If it is really important to protect young people from sexual predators, all aspects and contributing factors of child victimization should be addressed.