Sometimes cases of sexual abuse aren't very black and white. There are gray areas such as date rape and cases where the young adolescent sincerely believes to have fallen in love with her abuser. In these cases it is important to look at the power imbalance between the two.

Often the consequences and the damage in the long run are very similar to someone being raped by a stranger. Worse still these victims seem to struggle with trust issues more so than the 'black and white' victims.

Patrick Parkinson, Child Sexual Abuse and the Churches, Hodder & Stoughton 1997, p. 76-82

When Anna was twelve years old, she began to attend a Catholic high school. It was an all-girls school. Mr. Jones was the deputy principal.

He was a maths teacher and had primary responsibility for Anna's form when she was in year seven. He was a married man aged about thirty-five, and had three children. It was clear to Anna from the beginning that Mr. Jones had favorites, and she became one of those favorites.

It is difficult for her to say when their intimate relationship began. Over a period of time, Anna started to spend more and more time with Mr. Jones in his office, helping him by doing odd jobs and filing. He took an interest in her well-being, and would ask her about her home and family. He even managed to persuade Anna's mother that she could do great things in maths with a little extra coaching. Anna was very responsive to the attention that he showed her. She came from a family which had experienced divorce, and she was quite an unhappy girl. More than anything else, Anna craved love and security.

One day, when she was about thirteen years old, Mr. Jones's relationship with her took a new direction. He reached out and touched her knee, and then withdrew his hand again. It was over in an instant. Anna froze, not so much in fear as in surprise, and with interest - even a little excitement. Over a period of time, he increased the amount of physical contact he had with her. One day, he touched her on the shoulder as they were looking at a computer screen. On another occasion, he shut the door and held her for a long time by the hand. He asked her whether she had ever been in love with anyone and whether she had had sex. For reasons she cannot now explain, she responded to the question by telling a wild story about having had sex with a teacher at primary school. She was very creative at weaving this tale, but of course it lacked detail. All she could say was that they 'did it', but that they done it in a different way - it was not proper sexual intercourse. Mr. Jones was very interested in this. He pressed her for details, and she found it quite hard to maintain the lie. At one point she told him that the teacher had given her a gold ring as a pledge of affection. In fact, the ring had come from her grandmother.

A little while after this, Mr. Jones organised a camp at his house, with twenty girls. While his wife was sleeping in the house, Anna shared a small tent with Mr. Jones and his seven-year-old daughter. She woke up the following morning to find that he was tenderly rubbing her arm and staring lovingly into her eyes. He made her feel very special. The next day, when her mother came to pick her up, he touched her hand in a secretive way as a sign of affection.

Anna began to baby-sit for them during the holidays. This involved staying overnight with them. One night, after they came home from their time out, Anna recalls that she was crying about something. He held her hand, and said that he would kiss her tears away. He then kissed her on the mouth. Anna was shocked by this. It was naughty but nice. He then moved his hand over her chest and down to her vagina, and fondled her.

She felt very embarrassed that he was touching that private part of her. The next day, while driving her home, he drove off the main road and parked in a secluded place. He fondled her again, trying to simulate her sexually.

On another occasion, while they were going along in the car, Mr. Jones asked her to take off the ring which she claimed the primary school teacher had given her. He took the ring from her, saying that it symbolised the previous relationship with that teacher. Telling her that his love would be much better than all that she had experienced before, he threw the ring into a creek and promised to replace it with a gift from him. Later he gave her a gold bracelet.

They continued to see a great deal of each other, often spending time talking in his office or just gazing out of the window. They fantasised about escaping together. When she was about fourteen years old, they went on a school excursion which involved an overnight stay. Late in the night, after the other girls in Anna's room had gone to sleep, he sneaked into the room, put his hand down her pants and began to fondle her. Anna remembers saying that they should go out into the corridor. They kissed passionately. He pressed her against the wall and tried to penetrate her.

Soon after, Mr. Jones introduced her to oral sex. It was something that Anna had read about in a woman's magazine…. Oral sex became a feature of their relationship. From then on, Anna developed a compulsive habit of putting lanolin on her lips to stop them getting dry. Their first act of intercourse occurred in his car. During a school fete, he drove her over to some sports fields that  were isolated.… For Anna the sexual intercourse was very painful. There was little foreplay…. On this occasion, he asked her to promise him that however many babies she eventually had, the first one would be his.

After this time, they began to have sex regularly - sometimes more than once a week, at other times with longer intervals - whenever they could be alone together.... Mr. Jones had become emotionally dependent on Anna. When his father died, he cried in front of her and looked to her for emotional support. He told her that he needed her….

Anna had effectively become Mr. Jones's mistress. She was extremely jealous of his wife since the wife had his company most of the time while Anna had to meet him secretly. The wife knew about the relationship. She had found Anna's love letters to him and also found Anna's belt in the back of the car….

In the course of year nine, when all this was going on, Anna told two teachers about it. One of them told her that he couldn't help her. It was just too difficult for him to deal with. The other teacher, a young woman, told her that she needed to find a younger boyfriend. Anna was very confused. To this day she doesn't know whether her motivation in telling them was a cry for help, or whether she was just showing off about having an 'adult relationship.'

It all ended a few months later when Anna was fifteen, at a time when she was sufficiently troubled by their relationship to want the truth to come out. It had lasted for about two years… Mr. Jones resigned that day for 'personal reasons.' The incident was kept very quiet. The parents did not want to press charges for Anna's sake. It was also agreed that Mr. Jones would not teach in the area. Eventually he gained another job at a well-known private school in a different part of the country. …Anna received no pastoral care. Indeed, she felt as if she was blamed for what happened, and was shunned…. Anna felt that Mr. Jones was forgiven but she was not.

For years, Anna looked on this relationship as her first love affair. She had been passionate about Mr. Jones, and, although at first she did not find the sex pleasurable, she had come to be excited about it. She was as active a participant in their secret trysts as he was…. Later, Anna married and had children….. Anna no longer sees this relationship with Mr. Jones as just an 'affair'. Reviewing this story, it is possible to see so many of the techniques of seduction. Here was a troubled girl, one of the very few in that school from a divorced family, needing love and attention. Mr. Jones began by first touching her knee - momentary, non-sexual, harmless, but also unnecessary and unprompted. Perhaps he was just trying to see how she would react to physical touch. Then he engaged in more touching and caressing, still non-sexual but increasingly intimate.

He made her feel special. He related to her as he would to an adult friend. He treated her as an equal although she was just a junior member of the high school in which he held authority as the deputy principal.

Eventually, he began to touch her genitals, and then graduated to full intercourse. By that time, her sexual feelings were fully awakened, and they became lovers. She came to him for love, he took advantage of her for sex. As an experienced adult male, he initiated her into sexual activities which she had only read about in magazines.

Was this merely a harmless affair for Anna? At the time that the relationship was disclosed, Anna was examined by a psychologist who pronounced her to be a normal and healthy adolescent. Anna would have said that the relationship had done her no harm at all, although she suffered from the moral condemnation after it came to light. The subsequent story, however, indicates that the real harm was latent.

Anna's life began to fall apart after the birth of her first child, a son. She suffered severe post-natal depression, and was unable to cope with him. Ever since, she has been quite severely troubled. At times, she has been suicidal. A decade after she first began to put lanolin on her lips after beginning oral sex, she still applies this ointment, many times a day. It is compulsive disorder. She now has other compulsive disorders as well, such as a fetish for hand-washing and cleanliness (including constant showering) and a need to change her underwear several times a day. She experienced a lot of self-loathing and guilt.

If she finds herself alone with a middle-aged man in a room with the door shut, she is more likely than not to have a panic attack. When she was fourteen, she had long hair flowing down her back. Now she cuts it short because she cannot bear to look as she did then. …She has been in and out of psychiatric clinics, being treated for depression, narcotic abuse and the compulsive disorders. An important part of her treatment program has been coming to terms with what happened between the ages of thirteen and fifteen with Mr. Jones.

As a result of her problems, her marriage fell apart. Although she has a close relationship with her children, they live with her former husband. After she came to realise the effects on her of the sexual relationship, Anna decided to press charges. She did not want revenge. Her main concern at that stage was that he might be doing this to other young teenagers. Jones eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three and a half years' imprisonment. Only now is Anna beginning to rebuild her life.

Anna's first sexual experience was not mere high school experimentation but an affair with a married man more that twice her age, conducted at a time in her life when she ought to have been engaged in far more trivial pursuits. At an age when many girls try on their first make-up, Jones had involved her in a relationship as his lover and confidante. Many years later, she is still coming to terms with it. People who believe that there is nothing wrong with sex between adults and adolescents fail to understand that such relationships involve more than physical intimacy. The emotional dynamics of the relationship are very difficult for young teenagers to handle. Where the adult is in a position of trust and responsibility towards the child, the relationship inherently involves the most serious abuse of trust and power.