# Male, Sexually Active Octogenarian in Senior Home - Sweet & Harmless, or Predator? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 12, 2021, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111 "2021-06-12T13:07:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![BippityBoppityBoo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bippityboppityboo/32/5745_2.png) [@BippityBoppityBoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BippityBoppityBoo)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111/61 "2021-06-15T16:21:13Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > Old people are, first and foremost, people - with the same range of personality types as younger people > [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > It might be harder for young people to see this, because all they see is age…but I bet the elderly are pretty adept at figuring out what type of people their assisted living neighbors are. The Force is wise with this one. ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111/62 "2021-06-15T17:52:30Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > In my case, I’m defining it as someone who attempts to use harassment or coercion to obtain sex. How about deception? ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111/63 "2021-06-15T18:07:15Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Fascinating. Thank you for bravely sharing your story. That might have elicited a lot of attack here and I’m glad it has not. > > If I may ask, how does your step-daughter fit into this family? Was she an adult when you married her Mom? or 5? If you were her parent for awhile, how did that go? Is step-daughter generally a sensible person or generally a flake? Pre- this blow-up how was your relationship with her? How long after the sex event(s) did daughter in law find out? Did you keep having sex with your ex-wife after step-daughter found out and started shunning you? > > Just trying to gauge how much of step-daughter’s reaction is just her being her and living out her baggage versus a generic “reasonable person” reacting to the true facts on the ground. Step daughter was 5 when we married, in her 50’s now and we were close throughout her adult life. We had a little rift when I asked her not to give her mom so many drugs to keep her calm. Her mother would have outbursts of anger and sometimes crying but they wouldn’t usually last that long. Our sexual affair only lasted about 10 days. The mother told her daughter we were seeing each other like that and the daughter went ballistic. I really wasn’t even into it. I think I just wanted to try and make her feel kind of normal again. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111/64 "2021-06-15T18:31:02Z")
Depends on the nature of the deception, I guess. Pretending to be a doctor or therapist in order to touch someone inappropriately, that’s absolutely wrong. Embellishing and exaggerating the details of your income or life experience in order to make yourself a more attractive partner, not so much. Telling a woman of any age that you’re rich or successful when you’re not in order to get sex or a start a relationship with her is a crappy thing to do, but I don’t think it should be criminal or even actionable. It would suck to see your parent in assisted living fall for someone like that, but it would suck to see your middle-aged parent fall for that. Or your daughter. Or your best friend. Not all relationships are healthy, perhaps most aren’t. And it’s always frustrating to see someone you love get involved with someone that’s not good for them. There are things you can do and should do, most which involve talking to the person and trying to bring them to their senses. But as much as I might be tempted, I don’t think it would be right for the assisted living facility to physically block a basically mentally competent elderly patient from seeing someone because her children would like to stop the relationship because they thought the guy was lying to mom about being a Congressman, or whatever. And, as I mentioned upthread, it’s possible that grandma has always had a thing for the bad boys but didn’t want the downsides of a life with a smooth-talking charmer that couldn’t hold down a real job. And now that she’s at a place in her life where that doesn’t matter much anymore, maybe she wants to give the bad boys a shot. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111/65 "2021-06-15T18:35:25Z")
> [@Saintly\_Loser](#): > > How about deception? Are you talking about **[rape by deception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_deception#United_States)**, or are you talking about professing feelings that aren’t really there? Or something else? ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111/66 "2021-06-15T19:00:27Z")
Your cite says: > Rape by deception is a situation in which the perpetrator obtains the victim’s agreement to engage in sexual intercourse or other sex acts, but gains it by deception, such as false statements or actions, including leading the target into illusory perceptions in order to get sex. I hadn’t heard of “rape by deception” before, but sure, I’m talking about that. And about professing feelings that aren’t really there to someone who may be especially susceptible because of cognitive impairment. All of it, I guess. When we’re talking about people who are suffering from dementia (to whatever degree), certainly the possibility must be taken into account that they may be easily deceived and manipulated. We’re talking about predatory behavior, right? And obtaining a person’s agreement by deception may be all too easy if that person has some degree of dementia. Seems like that absolutely qualifies as predatory behavior. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111/67 "2021-06-15T20:33:40Z")
Given our legal system’s general requirement for _mens rea_, how does the possible dementia of the instigator affect culpability vs. the possible dementia of the responder? Noting that even among hetero pairings not all instigators are male and not all responders are female. referring back in my earlier formulation comparing this to drunk college kids: when both are goofy and both are saying yes at the moment who’s doing bad? ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111/68 "2021-06-15T21:32:30Z")
> [@Saintly\_Loser](#): > > That certainly is a wrinkle in the situation. Does someone who doesn’t remember getting divorced, a major life milestone, really suffering from only mild dementia? That seems fairly severe to me. She did not remember getting divorced but she did know that we were no longer together and that I was with someone else. She had no idea how long we had been apart ( almost 30 years) When her and I actually hooked up it was shortly after my long time girlfriend had passed away. She was lucid enough to put on oldies music, make sure she was freshly bathed and perfumed up, put on sexy negligees. She knew the entire routine of seduction. She was hungry for affection and touch and she was always very sexual. There was nothing predatory about this whole thing. And it seemed to make her feel better and calmer. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111/69 "2021-06-15T21:48:09Z")
Here’s a thread just getting going in GD that is sorta similar. > [@The intellectually disabled and bodily autonomy](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-intellectually-disabled-and-bodily-autonomy/944280): > > I have a 45 year old brother that is intellectually disabled (ID) and lives in a group home. He has a girlfriend that is about his age that also lives in the home. (Technically, she lives in a separate physical building but it is all considered part of the same home.) When you see them together, your immediate reaction is “How cute!” They hold hands and sometimes they even kiss. AFAIK, it doesn’t go any further than that and I believe that if it did, I would be informed as I am my brother’s le… The bottom line being, what does “capacity to consent” mean in the context of mental disability? The difference there is the disability is innate, not acquired late in life as we’re discussing here. There’s also a great cite to a real psych professional’s article about this issue. Interesting parellels. ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111/70 "2021-06-15T22:00:22Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > The difference there is the disability is innate, not acquired late in life as we’re discussing here. Another difference is that we’re talking about people in a similar state – the imbalance of cognitively impaired vs. _not_ cognitively impaired isn’t there. Seems like that should be important. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111/71 "2021-06-15T22:09:40Z")
It’s more nuanced than that IMO. In the other thread there’s significant differences in the degree of cognitive impairment of the residents. In this thread I don’t think the meat of the discussion is “How demented can somebody become before a normie like you or I can’t legitimately jump in their pants anymore?” This thread IMO is a lot more about “For two semi-demented people, who may be at very different places in the journey, what’s right and what’s wrong?” The cited article in the OP may have tried to portray it as the totally one-sided scenario. But that’s not where most of us have been spending our words. ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111/72 "2021-06-15T22:27:51Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > This thread IMO is a lot more about “For two semi-demented people, who may be at very different places in the journey, what’s right and what’s wrong?” Absolutely. And so I think that how far apart those diffferent places may be is very much relevant to the question of what’s right and what’s wrong. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2021, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111/73 "2021-06-16T02:11:37Z")
Agree 100%. As I outlined in far too many words in #11 upthread. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/male-sexually-active-octogenarian-in-senior-home-sweet-harmless-or-predator/944111.md?page=3)