A feminist and activist friend of mine alerted her facebook subscribers to this story (trigger warning), about a young person whose sexual history was put on public display by her mother and radio hosts and producers, despite the fact that she was a) a minor, and b) a survivor of sexual assault.
The radio hosts were obviously unaware of the fact that this girl was raped at the age of twelve, and we can assume that the same goes for producers of the show. However, I'm not sure that this is as simple as blaming the mother for bringing her child onto the show and asking questions when she knew about the assault, which is what many commenters of facebook seemed to do.
I also don't think that it is acceptable to simply assert that the radio show is awful and that they should be taken off the air. The fact that anyone thought that interviewing a child about her sexual history is okay is a massive problem, not just for the individual who thought it, but for society, since they also thought that it was okay for that information to be broadcast.
I don't listen to this radio station (for obvious reasons) and so I don't know who else has been interviewed with a lie detector on them, but I wonder how many people were asked questions that they did not feel comfortable in answering. Would their requests to refuse to answer a question be respected? And did this young person consent to the lie detector in the first place? It surely doesn't sound as though she did.
I hate to think what might have happened if she hadn't had consensual sex had denied the fact that she had - something that could be entirely accurate, since she was raped - and the lie detector had shown a lie. Would she have been subjected to mockery, jokes, anger... when would it have stopped? I imagine that it would be only when she released the information that her sexual experience occurred without her consent.
What a stunning example of people forgetting that rape exists, and contributing to rape culture by assuming that people's sexual history has any bearing on how much privacy they deserve.
So yes, the parent is to blame, but the fact that someone thought it would be appropriate and would garner public interest to discuss a child's sexual history is symptomatic of a far greater problem, which is that we are all judged and treated as though we are our sexual history.
What do others think?
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These two particular radio hosts (especially Kyle) have a history of being controversial (to say the least). They may not have known that the girl was raped, but from my reading I'd say they thought they had a pretty good chance of outing the girl for having under-age sex, which if had with an adult is rape! Even if it wasn't legally rape how is it acceptable to out a minor's sexual activities on national radio? Don't let the hosts off scot free.
Exactly, Kandela. They can't say they didn't see it coming, when MOST sex had by 14yo's falls under the statutory rape category. And the mother KNEW she had been raped at twelve. How could she do that to her own daughter?
What they did was a form of on-air sexual assault on a minor.
Perverts.
Exactly, Kandela. They can't say they didn't see it coming, when MOST sex had by 14yo's falls under the statutory rape category. And the mother KNEW she had been raped at twelve. How could she do that to her own daughter?
What they did was a form of on-air sexual assault on a minor.
Perverts.