Still, I think the word “seduction” is loaded. Like I said to pedimd, there are a lot of people out there who are looking to blame victims–the Polanski case proves that more than just about any other situation in recent memory. Saying that victims were “seduced’ is a time-honored way of apologizing for the attacker and implying that victims were asking for it, so I’d just as soon avoid that term entirely. No reason to give the apologists something to run with…

That show was about the thought process of pedophiles. The men in the group talked about how they believed that they loved their victims, that they wanted to make them feel good and give them pleasure. Oprah described how common it was for victims to feel physical pleasure, to not experience violence, and to feel invested in protecting their abuser, who is usually a family member or close family friend. This is why children often don’t tell, and why they often feel a lot of guilt and shame and denial. She emphasized that this was a manipulation that served the purposes of the abuser. One of them said “I murdered the person she could have been” and Oprah was almost seething as she agreed emphatically with that statement.

None of this has anything to do with Roman Polanski. As far as we know, he’s not a pedophile. He’s an ephebophile who violently raped his victim and has “dated” teenage girls since. People who defend him don’t do so because there was any indication that his victim felt physical arousal, they do it because they’re piece-of-shit misogynists who really, really liked The Pianist…or something.

And I don’t think it’s fair to make blanket statements about prosecutors not doing their jobs. (OK, some don’t do their jobs.) Kid victims often do a number of things that make them look really bad — they don’t tell right away, they don’t tell everything at once, they tell and then say they lied, they act out, etc. etc. This is totally normal behavior under the circumstances, but it makes them look less credible (totally not fair, but true anyway). And the defense attorneys do use this against them– it’s not the prosecutor’s fault, it’s just the facts of the case, and everyone is entitled to a defense, no matter how disgusting they are. So if I’m asked about the “bad stuff” the kid did or said, and I don’t address it explicitly, it looks like I’m covering something up, which looks even worse, and does not help the kid.

Of course, I know that in real life it doesn’t always work that way, but any prosecutor who lets a defense attorney turn the focus onto the victim is failing at his or her job.