This gets into the repressed childhood memories issue and some definite shaky ground.
Oh wait, I didn't mean to take it to repressed memories, which I more than agree is on definite shaky ground.
It is more about cases where people do not recognize they have a problem or condition, though clinically it is diagnosable, or that they do not connect it with a sexual trauma because of its different nature (thus they fail to make a connection that an outside observer might).
That second one is stickier of course, but the first does occur.
And how do you measure something as murky as {less likely to make male friends after being sexually molested by an older male}?
Yeah, this is a good example of a "problem" which could fall in either category above, as well as raising the question of if it is a problem at all, or how one can quantify it.
There are of course many things that might cause someone to be less likely to make male friends, beyond trauma, and who is to say that is a "harm" rather than a "characteristic"?
And if the victim becomes pathological in later life, does the fact of victimhood exonerate them? Say they end up like the "BTK" killer: is this behavior (only) due to having been a victim? I think that would be a stretch.
Personally I have no understanding of exoneration based on pathology. That merely describes why a person may act the way they do, and not whether society needs protection from an individual. So, I agree.
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)