The recent sexual assault allegationsagainst Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have raised many questions, but by far one of the most discussed is the relevance of age. As described by Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh was 17 and she was 15 at the time of the alleged incident. Now both are in their 50s.
Do events that happened during adolescence still matter to a person well into adulthood? How should we think about sexual assault from a person’s teenage years decades later? Political commentators have been weighing in on this question in relation to the allegations against Kavanaugh. As articulated by opinion columnist Jonathan Zimmerman in USA Today, “Kavanaugh was a teenager at the time. Of course he was different then; he was a third of the age he is now. And teens do stupid, dangerous and destructive things.”
As a violence researcher, journal editor, and psychologist, I am one of the many scientists who have been studying these kinds of questions for decades. Misunderstandings and assumptions about patterns of behavior in adolescence have been flourishing in the discourse around Kavanaugh’s alleged actions. It’s worth looking at what we know from decades of investigating these topics.
[For more on this story by Sherry Hamby, go to https://www.vox.com/first-pers...ions-teen-psychology]
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