Sometimes I thank God I grew up when I did. "Helicopter" parenting was unheard of, and in spite of having a largely unhindered learning curve, I grew up pretty unscathed, AND I went to Catholic schools where I had a lot of exposure to nuns and priests! Of course we were all pretty much unaware of the covert grooming perpetuated by some clergy. Priests generally appeared to be imbued with a saint like status and it was a foregone conclusion that anyone who chose that path in life would undoubtedly be an exemplary person. Ditto with Jimmy Saville, albeit he behaved and looked like a creep, but all that fund raising. Came at a hell of a price 
In retrospect I have no regrets I wasn't a precocious early teen, in that my experience with the opposite sex was very limited I think possibly my group of friends, that I still have today, were not the ones that were up to all sorts, possibly viewed as "drips" by those who did get into early sexual relationships only to find themselves on an early marriage path that didn't always work out. I was in my later teens before I started dating and possibly more savvy to cope with it at that stage. I think all my boyfriends, not that many, were ok and never had to deal with too much in the way of psychological manipulation. I do remember encountering low level every day sexism in the work place, I think I was 19 or 20 when page 3 of The Sun was launched and can still remember the feeling that my sex was being objectified by these women and annoyingly those very women who posed for these pictures misconstrued, females who didn't like what they were doing as jealous. As far as I was concerned they didn't look any better than me, (then) but they had no idea how adversely they affected all of us. Try explaining to an office of men that being compared to a pin up is an uncomfortable feeling, they rarely got that and yes it is horrible to see that sort of thing being played out now, at say a football match, are we any further forward?
Conversely, aside from the small percentage of girls who would have posed for a publication such as The Sun, out of the Pandora's Box of modern day technology we now have wholesale sexualised images offered up for all and sundry on all manner of social media sites. I ask myself why so many girls are so indiscreet and self publicising these days, is it down to bad role models, Kim Kardashian? and a whole host of other nobodies they seek to emulate, I don't really get this "in your face look at me" side of life. I also don't understand going out dressed in next to nothing on a pub crawl or the like,l sometimes ending in being comatose on a pavement. Surely there should be an onus on a responsibility for your own behaviour?
Grooming is probably one of the most abhorrent aspects that a young person can fall victim today and often it is insidious and doesn't always occur in the hanging out late a night on the streets scenario, although it's not as if teenagers hanging round streets is anything new. There was an interesting letter in The Times yesterday from a Lord Singh of Wimbledon who stated that it is a lesser known fact that Hindu and Sikh girls have also been groomed by Muslim men. He felt that their attitudes to females needs to be addressed and discussed in their own communities. I don't quite know what the answer is to cultural behaviour that has been borne overseas and is then transposed to the host country, when those that live within those communities will confine themselves to an ingrained way of life that is possibly centuries old and will have a massive disconnect with western values and will eventually prove detrimental to social cohesion generally.
