From the Luxembourg guidelines the journalist is so fond of quoting, utterly fixated on the upper age limit. Surprise! They do not say what he thinks that they say:
"However, no child should ever, under any circumstances, be able to legally consent to her/his own exploitation or abuse. It is therefore important that States criminalise all forms of sexual exploitation of children up to the age of 18 years, and consider any presumed “consent” to exploitative or abusive acts as null and void.
A.3.v Adolescent
∅ Special attention should be paid to how this term is used.
While major dictionaries define adolescent as “[...] a young person in the process of developing from a child into an adult”, and thus in a non-numerical manner, a number of UN agencies have defined “adolescents”, both in English and in Spanish, as persons up to the age of 19 years of age, and adolescence as “the period in human growth and development that occurs after childhood and
before adulthood, from ages 10 to 19”.
However, the term “adolescent” is not a legal term, and it
is not referred to at all in the CRC or in the OPSC.
The term “adolescent” was included in the title of the World Congress III Against Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents because Spanish-speaking stakeholders explained that “child” in Spanish mainly refers to very young children and does not include adolescents.
The term “adolescent” could
be a way of defining the “in-between” phase between childhood and adulthood, thus recognising that adolescents (who legally are still children if under 18 years of age) are in a phase of evolving capacities in which they can take partial or full responsibility for certain actions (e.g. sexual consent or the regulated right to work), while also acknowledging their lack of full legal capacity and, importantly, lack of capability to consent to abuse or exploitation.
Conclusion: When this term is used in the context of child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, it is important to distinguish between adolescents up to age 18 (who legally should be considered children) and adolescents aged 18 and above, and to ensure adolescents under the age of 18 are granted the rights and protection accorded to all children.
A.3.vi Teenager
∅ Special attention should be paid to how this term is used.
The term “teenager” is closely related to that of “adolescent”, and these two terms are often defined in an identical fashion, in particular with regard to the upper age limit of 19 years. The term “teenager” has, semantically speaking, a very clear definition: it means a person between 13 and 19 years of age—that is, a person in her/his “teens”—thus refers in the English language to the suffix “teen” in the words “thirteen”, fourteen”, and so forth.
Conclusion: While there is no particular indication against the use of this term, care should be taken when it is used in the context of child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, so as to distinguish between teenagers up to age 18 and teenagers aged 18 and above, and to ensure teenagers under
the age of 18 are granted the rights and protection accorded to all children."