stevenglish

I think you're spot on with that one, it worries the hell out of me, my daughter being looked at and thought of 'in that way' and this is a modern issue whether we like to think it or not. On a related matter STI's are sky rocketing in teenagers, never used to be like that did it? doesn't that point to sexual contact between youngsters being less common than it is now?

cricket1again

I can't say too much without possibly identifying people so I'll have to be careful but I know I'm a good mum. Nevertheless I went through a nightmare situation with my daughter when she was 15 after she befriended a youth group leader. He was 45 and she just packed a bag and moved in with him after he enticed her away from home. We went through 9 months of legal hell trying to get her back but we came hard up against the 1989 Children's Act which stated that she had the right to make her own choices. As she had not made any allegations against him, there was no evidence of him being convicted of sex with an underage girl.
It went to parliment, I had meetings with MP's and it ended up splashed across the UK's national headlines at how children were out of control and how parents had no control left over their children. I was out of my mind with worry because he was mixed up with the worst kinds of people imaginable.

She did come home eventually unscathed and our lives as a family moved on. But I received 8,000 letters and emails from parents who had been in the same situation. Some of their children never came back because it's not about the parents of the kids, it's about what's out there and who they meet on the streets.
I was lucky, I got my daughter back. Other parents, good parents, lost theirs to a system that leaves youngsters wide open to reckless choices and endless exploitation.

We definitely need a better system and it has to start with the whole of society taking a morality check.