I agree with you that the core issue here is the legal precedence. But the other equally important issues, ones I found very worrying, are: a) the imprecision of the attorney's language - what did she mean by "having sex"?, and b) the revelation that the Tavistock uses loose age categories that allow them to lump together of all kids age 12 and 13 together as if they're all in the exact same phase of development. At the very least, the Tavi should be classifying and analyzing these kids not just by their chronological ages, but by what Tanner stage they're in.

It's so interesting to me that no one in your HS was coupled up until age 15, and you didn't start dating till 17. I wonder if the differences in our experiences might be related to where we each grew up? Country and state/province, and milieu.

Although I didn't go "all the way" until I was well over 16, I started dating at 13. Which was pretty normal for het girls in the late 60s in the suburban NYC area I grew up in. My own kids, who are about a half decade+ younger than you, started dating later than I did, but in their school and peer groups in hipsterville NYC some kids were coupling at 12/13. (And one of my eldest's male classmates groped me in the crotch and said something vulgar to me when the boy was six!) My own kids didn't really date early on, but they started having serious love interests and full-on PIV sex about the same time I did - during their junior year of HS (circa 2005-2010).

But I'm not trying to make what I or my kids did seem to be the norm for either my or their generation. There's always been huge variation- which is why I objected to the way the Tavi lawyer was characterizing things.

Also, I'm well aware that American girls who went to Roman Catholic convent schools in the 50s, 60s and 70s like I did were often "fast" coz no matter how behaved, we were probably doomed to hell (as Billy Joel made clear in his song "Only The Good Die Young"). Many of my close friends, especially my lesbian friends, that I met in college and later in life didn't date or experiment at all in HS; they only began to figure out their sexuality after they'd left their childhood homes - and some were well into their 20s before they dated. Also, my own principal college BF didn't have PIV sex until we fell in love when he was 19 pushing 20.