UK newsYouth seduced by older woman 'will suffer trauma later in life'
Older women who seduce very young men, like Mrs Robinson in the Dustin Hoffman film The Graduate, can cause males lasting damage and "implant the seeds of self-hate and self-harm", according to a professor of psychiatry.
If a girl under 16 has a sexual experience with a man five years older, she was considered to be the victim of abuse, said Michael King from the Royal Free and University College medical school in London. Yet if the boy was under 16 and the woman was older, people sniggered and the boy's friends envied him.
The experience could damage boys, Professor King told the Royal College of Psychiatry's annual conference in London. When in their 30s they might still suffer psychiatric problems. "They are two to three times more likely to see a psychiatrist," he said. "They are also four to five times more likely to harm themselves if they have been assaulted. Self-harm is the biggest problem. The conclusion is that there is a clear link."
Sexual assault of men was rising, and in a third of the cases the assailant was a woman. In a cross-section of the male population, 5% of 2,500 said they had been assaulted as children. A further 7-8% said they had consenting sexual experiences, but, said Prof King, it was difficult to be sure consent was real. "You are asking someone of 30 if they consented at 13 or 14," he said.
Men who were sexually assaulted felt ashamed of what had happened. Those close to them found it hard to believe that they had been forced to have sex with an older woman. "Men can defend themselves, can't they?" he said rhetorically. The experience could do lasting damage and lead to such men cutting or otherwise abusing themselves. "What we find is that the effects of the sexual assaults are very similar to the effects on women."
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