My only input:
Tread VERY carefully on this, especially on the sexual inuendo. I do not for one moment dispute the sexual abuse of children, it is real and reprehensible. In fact it is so much that even the implication of such can ruin a innocent person’s life, forever.
Why I say this: I currently live with a friend of mine and his family, including their 12 yo daughter. Said daughter is something of a smartass and her cynical humor often is in line with mine, and we trade jibes. Just yesterday, I was in the kitchen getting ice cubes and accidently dropped one on the floor. Daughter snorts and calls me “grace”, I respond by telling her to button it before I do it for her. She then waits until I’m bending down to get the cube and says “Well, the least you can do is pick it up”. I then tell her to shaddup before I stick the ice up her nose, and advance on her in a mock threatening way, causing her to go into a fit of giggles. A completely innocent and jibing encounter, not the first and not the last. Reading this thread has caused me to wonder, as I hadn’t since they moved in, about the possible exposure there is for me living here.
The fact that I do have to worry about this is just sad. Who does it hurt if I joke around with my friends’ kids? Taken out of context, with the wrong (read idiotic and/or militant) person around, I could get into serious trouble, and have something branded on me for the rest of my life, for doing nothing. If I were to close down now, I would get some protection, but I would also probably hurt and confuse the daughter, and explaining why would probably do more for damamging her worldview than I care to contemplate. Besides, if I joke around with her, or roughhouse with her younger brother, it makes them more likely to be comfortable having me around anyway.
Again, I’m not saying abuse doesn’t happen, and I’m not saying that in the case presented, it isn’t happening, but rumor and innuendo should not be enough to ruin someone’s life.
If I’m coming off sanctimonious or assholish, please be assured, that isn’t my intent, just fustration on some of the things society is doing that, IMHO, is going to come back on us when these children grow up.
As for the mother, she stayed only long enough for the daughter to retort with some remark like “Go away!”, practically in tears. In short, the father was affable, responsible (he’d come to do some repairs on the grandmother’s home) and rational; the daughter quite put out with the mother. 