Dear Sir,

I am writing in response to the July 11 article titled “Young women seduce older men for sport”. I would like to address this quote as well as other statements made by the defence lawyer, Charles Richardson, quoted in the article.

The claim that “young women seduce older men for sport” is one of the most ludicrously misogynistic statements I have ever heard. Mr Richardson is discussing a 13-year-old girl and inexplicably characterising her as a “young woman”.

She is a child. She is immature and does not have fully developed decision-making abilities. This is an outrageous example of victim-blaming because the case of a child being lured by an adult has been distorted into an incident of a scheming woman purposely manipulating a man.

I absolutely cannot fathom why Mr Richardson would choose to vilify a child who has suffered sexual abuse. He says that the “young women who do this” need to be “held accountable”.

What kind of crime could these “young women” have possibly committed? Is it not reasonable for guilty individuals who have had sex with minors to be held infinitely more accountable than their innocent victims?

KATIE GRAINGE

Pembroke

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