And back to the 'outrage', with all the high profile cases involving rape and sexual assault in the news, is a sexual assault a sexual assault if it's consensual?
Sky Sports Presenter Charlie Webster is going to raise money for Women's Aid by running between 40 football ground across the country. To get publicity for this worthy cause, she went on the radio and admitted that she too had been sexually assaulted as a 15 year old by her coach.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25740082
But the things she says have a strange tone to them -
"Not one time in my head did I think 'I'm being sexually assaulted', because if I did, I would have done something about it."
"I got quite close to the running coach because you do," she said.
"You should never touch a young girl anyway, but he very, very manipulatively and very slowly sexually assaulted me."
As it turns out, this coach was a complete wrong 'un, got a 10 year sentence and was put on the sex offenders register, but it had nothing to do with Charlie Webster, it was another younger girl who kept a diary of events and went to the police.
I'm not denying that Charlie Webster was sexually exploited because she had the hots for her coach or that engaging in underage sex is acceptable in any way, just asking if this is an actual 'assault'?
Is this it then, the new 'Get out of jail free card' for all women who've had inappropriate sex? I was assaulted and I didn't even realise I was being assaulted or think I was being assaulted, but I'm a woman, the perennial victim, incapable of sin or malice in either deed or thought throughout time and in all perpetuity? So because I had sex and it was wrong, I must have been assaulted?
So was Charlie Webster actually assaulted or is she pulling out this chapter of her sexual life in order to get some cheap publicity and jumping on the media bandwagon? Does her 'assault' dilute or devalue the victims of much more graphic, non-consensual and violent assaults? Or is one just as bad as the other?
I'm not making a judgement or declaration, just throwing it out there for people to make their own decisions.
