Sexual abuse is the abuse of power - Rape and age difference

Excerpted from, "I Was 12, He Was 20 -- So Why Did Everyone Blame Me for Our Sexual Relationship?" by Jillian Lauren

I realized that regardless of what this girl asked for, if someone eight years her senior touched her, I would unreservedly call it sexual abuse. In that case my politics and my emotions would have no quarrel at all. 

So that is what I will call it. Feelings around abusive dynamics are often complex and ambiguous, but that doesn’t lessen the impact in the lives of the victims. I was abused. And I liked it, some of the time. I loved him, certainly. But that doesn’t change the fact that I have lived with it for the rest of my life and I couldn’t possibly have foreseen the extent of the reverberations. That is meant to be the job of the adults in the equation.

Rape is not a sex act, rape is an exercise of power and domination.