Our children and their sex games

It was, said an official, a case where you looked around the Central Criminal Court and saw there could be no winners. The fact that a child of 15 was alleging that she had been raped by a 17-year-old was shocking enough. What set it apart from other cases, however, was the evidence tumbling out, building a picture of what appeared to be a typical Friday night out for a crowd of affluent south Co Dublin teenagers.

In court, the demeanour of the alleged victim - now 17 - was calm and cool as she gave her evidence. For the then 15-year-old and her girlfriend, the evening of October 17th, 1997, began with the purchase of eight pint cans of Scrumpy cider before heading for the log, a felled tree in a wooded area beside St Raphael's Convent near Stillorgan, a spot which other friends had told them about.

It was a place where some 40 young people regularly congregated, to talk, drink and "get off" with each other for kissing, cuddling and whatever else they wished to do - what teenagers call "meeting", explained the prosecuting counsel.

The girl recognised a number of people there and sat around talking and drinking with them, and getting a little drunk. There was a lot of "meeting" going on and she soon went into the bushes with one fellow.

"I was `meeting' for a while by kissing at first but then it went a bit further and I gave him oral sex." It was she who initiated the oral sex. All her peer group were talking about it, she said; she wanted to experiment and be able to talk about it, too. She never saw the boy again after that.

After going back to the log, she met a second boy who put his arm around her and asked her to go into the wooded area with him. By now she was on her fourth pint of cider, which she downed hurriedly as they headed into the bushes.

"I was just going to `meet' him and we were kissing each other when he asked for oral sex," she said. Though she thought it "a bit forward" of him, she agreed, got down on her knees for the second time that evening, pulled down his boxer shorts and performed oral sex on him for a few minutes. She "went along" with it without really enjoying it, she told the court. It was here that her evidence and that of the boy diverged.

He claimed that she kept asking him to perform oral sex on her, which he refused to do. He asked if she wanted intercourse and she said No, because he didn't have a condom. He said that when he continued to fondle her she started shouting and told him to "get away". She said that while she was performing oral sex on him he pushed her over on her back and raped her.

A garda gave evidence that the girl was "inconsolable" for over an hour at the Garda station where she and her girlfriend arrived, both crying, at 11.20 p.m. She was adamant that she didn't want her parents notified and kept repeating that she would be in trouble if she stayed out late. She waited a fortnight to make a formal complaint because of her reluctance to admit what went on.

She betrayed no reaction on Thursday when a jury of six men and six women returned after 2 1/2 hours and unanimously acquitted the boy, now 19, of rape and sexual assault or when Mr Justice Carney said he hoped the boy would never forget the way he had been supported throughout the trial by his parents and family.

As the parties left the court and the nightmare receded for some of them at least, the question uppermost in many adult minds was whether what they had been hearing about was a typical Friday night. Do well-broughtup 15-year-olds really wander off to secluded places at weekends, get drunk on strong cider and perform oral sex on anyone who asks?

Do young boys nowadays expect oral sex as a given? Did any of their parents know where these children were on a dark autumn night, who they were with or what they were at?

"None of this is a bit surprising," said Deirdre, a woman who works with young teenagers. "The only thing that's unusual about this particular incident is that it has come out in the courts and I'm very pleased about that. People need to know, and they should know that it happens everywhere. Age, area, social class have nothing to do with it."

Teenagers, for the most part, seemed startled at the naivety of the question. Oral sex, i.e., "blow jobs", is, by all accounts, the stuff of everyday conversation. "You'll be asked `Do you spit, swallow or gargle?' or `Do you go down on a first date?"' said one teenager with a resigned shrug. "A lot of it goes on, and we all know girls who do it."

As to how much the parents knew, a garda has said that of 60 young people interviewed for this investigation up to 90 per cent of the parents had no idea where their children were that Friday night.

Discussions with gardai, with youth workers, with parents, with teenagers themselves, are conducted in an atmosphere of resignation and in some cases despair. They all voice much the same concerns: the prevalence of what appears to the young to be easy, no-consequences sex in the media and the availability of hard porn videos; the powerlessness/indifference of parents; the supply of alcohol to the young; the impractical nature of much of the sex education available.

"Go to any of the parks around the towns and cities - and we're talking about parks bordering expensive middle-class housing estates - on a Friday or Saturday at 8 or 9 p.m. and you'll see gangs of well-dressed boys and girls with their pile of cider and beer cans in the bushes," said a senior Garda officer.

"These are your children and mine, make no mistake about that - a lot of responsibility is back on the parents. There's this copout of the sleep-over . . . How many parents will turn up on that doorstep with the excuse that Annie has forgotten her hat or something just to check that they are where they say they are and that there's some form of supervision?"

Deirdre echoes his concerns. "Parents must empower themselves to take back the role of parenting. They have to draw the line and remember that parenting is a job. Young people must have boundaries and be forced to face the consequences of not observing them."

Alcohol, both she and the garda point out to no one's surprise, is a huge factor. "There is far more damage done with alcohol than with drugs," she says, but adult role modelling and poor ID checking mean that it's plentifully available. She recalls an instance where a bunch of unsupervised 14-year-olds in a "free gaff" (a house with no adults) were able to ring the local off-licence and have the alcohol supplies delivered to their door.

Just a few months ago, a 16-year-old Carlow girl on work experience for the local paper was served alcohol in four out of six pubs in the town.

"These skinny little 14- and 15-year-olds aren't physically able for alcohol," says the Garda officer. "Scrumpy cider is strong and sweet and tastes like lemonade. After a few of them, crimes are perpetrated against both boys and girls and they don't even know about it."

Others, both men and women, flail out at the way very young girls comport themselves, criticising their skimpy clothes, sexual posturing and predatory ways, and just stop short of saying the unsayable, that "they're asking for it".

This is dangerous talk in a climate where one study conducted by the Dublin Institute of Technology's Dr Kevin Lalor showed that over a third of the 176 female respondents aged below 16 had had sex forced on them despite requests to stop.

"Young people now are perceived to be so educated and advanced and able to stick up for themselves, but scratch just a little beneath the surface and they're just like you and I were at the same age," said Deirdre.

A CENTRAL truth for every generation of teenage girls is the need for love and attention. The much-touted girl power comes in a poor second in this scenario. For many of those with poor self-esteem and family problems, the "blow job" may look like the answer to getting the boy or the attention but not getting pregnant.

And despite the supposed egalitarian age we live in, another stereotype has not changed at all, the concept of the slut and the stud. For all that, young boys are also coming under intolerable peer pressure to be out there, performing, being macho and cool: if not, they're "gay".

The basic truth, however, is that regardless of the triggers, sex and boiling hormones are a central feature of teenage life. Olive Braiden of the Rape Crisis Centre has called for schools and parents to "deal with the more practical issues of sexuality".

In the light of this week's court case and the news that as many as 70 new cases of genital warts are treated at a Dublin STD clinic every week, the topics in the much-derided young teen magazines such as Sugar seem more relevant than usual. The first question in the Sex Speak column of its current issue is purportedly from a girl (age unknown) who says that because she is not yet ready for sex with her boyfriend of six months, he has asked for a "blow job" instead.

"What does he mean?" she asks.

The reply is to the point and adds: "This can't make you pregnant, but it is possible to catch sexually transmitted diseases like thrush, herpes, or HIV (the virus that leads to AIDS) . . ."

How many teenagers, drunk and unsupervised, heading for a park near you tonight are aware of this?