Do you think as social morals change, past incidences are justified by that era's social beliefs?

Question

When I was a young teenager, my ex (twelve years my senior) would not take no for an answer. I was having problems with my family and he offered to help me when it was not safe to go home. He began to use my family as justification to force me to stay with him. I suffered severe depression because he repulsed me yet made me feel that I owed him so much for allegedly saving me.

When I sought help to escape him, my first attorney made the comment to me “for God sake woman, the man loves you.” Basically mutual friends and church peers accused me of being a brat when I filed for a restraining order after he lost his license for drunk driving, and most explained his misfortune as I led him too it (he was out late drinking with friends one night and got caught driving drunk, when he called me a day later from jail he yelled that he called me all night and I was out cheating on him, but I was home with our children and my elderly mom and he never really called me).

What I think is interesting is that now men are picked up as offenders if they seek even consensual sex with a minor. Had this been the case years ago, I never would have married him and certainly wouldn’t have dated him, I tried to get away back then and no service could help me. I wonder how many men have done this when it was socially acceptable and now condemn those who do the same now that services are available to prevent this. When my ex asks if I watch the TV show “To Catch a Predictor” and states how disgusting those men are (often in front of our children to make a point), it burns me emotionally.

Answer 1

I think you are totally backward.

My 14 year old sister got into a sexual relationship with a non-minor. When I went to the police, they blew me off.

Maybe Dr. Phil or Oprah would condemn it, but not the police. They said that statutory rape was on the books, but nearly impossible win in a court of law.

If anything has changed society has become radically more sexual at radically younger ages. I think with that increased sexuality, especially among the young, the laws meant to protect the young are harder to enforce.

Im sorry your guy is a jerk. As sorry as I am that your church doesn't see through his antics, they often were raised in a world without frequent occurrences of his type of predator. They cant even believe he exists, much less do something about it. I wish they grew up on my side of the tracks, or yours.

Find a church with a real ministry to alcoholics. Stay away from big churches, or wealthy ones because they simply lack the equipment to understand you. If they dont even understand you they cant possibly being to love you or show the kind of love that the God of the bible asks them to show.

Neither you, nor I, nor the police can change yesterday. You cant, but you dont live there. You live in today. The choices you make today, they get to sculpt and form your tomorrow. Make the choices today that are healthy, that make tomorrow less full of darkness. You are the only one who can make those kinds of choices or act with that kind of vision. Nobody else can do it for you.

Answer 2

Yes. What you said.