Nope, that's not defending anyone.
Just because you don't understand what's going on.
In recent years, psychology and safeguarding research have increasingly focused on grooming behaviours, coercive manipulation, and the psychological processes involved in abusive dynamics — both on…
lindacjturner.com
"Grooming, Sexual Manipulation, and Why It Can Be Difficult to Detect"
"
Another major finding in abuse research is that many manipulative relationships follow identifiable stages:
- targeting vulnerability
- gaining trust
- increasing emotional dependency
- testing boundaries
- creating confusion or control
- maintaining secrecy or psychological dominance"
Often these people are vulnerable, but they're also willing because they trust the person, they're emotionally dependent on that person.
It is rape, because having sex with a child is always rape. Anyone over 16 having sex with anyone under 16 is rape.
Doesn't mean it's "forced rape" which is where the person says they don't want it.
Grooming can go from non-forced rape to forced rape over time.