I have name changed for this because it's such an emotive subject, and folk are likely to be flamey (quite rightly too). And I am a wimp.
You'll have all seen in the news reference to Prince Andrew's friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, almost universally described as 'the billionaire paedophile'.
When I read the newspaper reports I discovered that he had been convicted of procuring underage girls for sex, some of whom I understand (owing to US consent laws) were 17. Some, of course, were considerably younger: I understand the youngest to have been 14.
AIBU to think that this is not 'paedophilia'? That suggests to me an utterly unnatural, in fact downright evil, sexual preference. Finding post-pubescent girls and young women, who are presenting as adults in the physical essentials, seems to me to be a different matter.
I found myself becoming quite angry. Not because I felt sorry for Epstein (undoubtedly as immoral, sleazy, predatory and abusive a man as you could hope to find, and he well deserves his jail term and worse), but because labelling him a paedophile somehow detracts from quite how appalling, and how absolutely against every fibre of a normal person's nature, paedophilia is.
The article I saw was illustrated by a picture of Epstein with his arm around one of his 'child victims'. She was 17, nearly as tall as him, and very definitely a woman, not a child.
Just to reiterate (in case it gets lost in debate!) I am not saying tht what he did was right. On the contrary I would very much like the opportunity to kick his bollocks off. But I suppose what I think is: a sleazy old man fancying and preying on teenage girls is a revolting controlling abusive prick, but not a paedophile.
There. AIBU? I would genuinely like to know & don't know where else to raise the debate.