Flutterby™! :

Lots of people have mentioned this, but Debra linked to a longer version of the "Girl, 9, Charged With Sexual Assault" story. I'm not sure where I stand on the matter. It's clear that the charges are there to get the girl in to the system where she can get "help", but I'm sure there's not enough information in these stories to tell whether she needs help.

"We would love to know, very dearly, where she got this" behavior, says Sgt. John Maston, head of the Manchester police's child investigations unit. Nature, perhaps? And in this case it wasn't (metaphorically) beaten out of her early enough? In the article, he's quoted as continuing "She won't even admit she did anything wrong." Yep, gotta nail 'em with a good healthy dose of shame, otherwise they won't be compliant citizens. At the very least, you can tell she's been raised to not admit anything to a police officer; someone's doing something right.

Mitigating these statements is the notion of the extreme age difference, and the usual question about consent in children's power dynamics. So I guess I don't have a good opinion on the matter.