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Victims of crime as old as eighteen or nineteen can be thought of as children, whereas perpetrators as young as six can be thought of and treated as adults. Such analogical playing with categories follows our needs. For instance, thinking of an eighteen-year-old molestation victim as a child allows us to create a composite image that gives us innocence as well as sexual capacity. The child is functional, a malleable part of our discourse rather than a fixed stage; “the child” is a products of ways of perceiving, not something that is there.
Kincaid, Erotic Innocence, p. 18-9
