Juvenile sexuality and psychosocial immaturity continue to result in disturbing cases whereby men stoop to disdainful levels of paedophilia and engage sexual relations with underage girls, according to renowned psychologist Dr Leahcim Semaj.

“A theory says most men don’t make it past 17. They get older, but they don’t get more mature. Just notice how many men you see in their 20s and 30s and 40s still running down women. You have a saying in Jamaica that you put a dress on a broomstick and man chases it. It says that all that a woman has to do to get sex is indicate that she’s available. It doesn’t matter if she’s dirty or whatever, just indicate that she’s available and a lot of males just flock to her,” Semaj told the Jamaica Observer in an interview last Thursday.

“So imagine now, a teenage girl who is attractive and indicating to an adult that she is available. Unless this person’s maturity is intact, where he knows that no matter how available she is, she is off limits, you’re not supposed to do that — that’s where the problem comes in. This happens in homes also, especially with a stepfather, because a lot of girls are in situations where the man in the home is either her mother’s boyfriend or her mother’s husband, but is not her father.”

In 2021, a worrisome trend of transactional sex between minors and older men was among several findings in a study dubbed, ‘The Stress Test: The Impact of the Pandemic on Domestic and Community Violence’.

The study was conducted by the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI), with the support of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Violence Prevention Alliance (VPA), and was conducted in 47 of the poorest and most violent communities in Jamaica.

Semaj said data shows that the way biology works is that once the girl approaches puberty, or is in puberty, and is connectedly around males that she is not biologically connected to, it actually impacts her psychosocial development.

“She matures faster, she sees her period earlier, and it is almost like a little girl coming into the teenage, wanting to test her femininity on daddy — hug up daddy, jump in daddy lap and all that type of thing. She’s testing her femininity. But male adults are supposed to know that is off limits. But so many of our men are technically psychosocially immature,” he told the Sunday Observer.

“The data tells us that a teenage girl coming into puberty in an environment where there are adult males that she’s not biologically connected with, it almost stimulates her development. Now, just understand a teenage girl growing up in a tenement yard with all kinds of teenage boys and men looking at her and admiring her and making all kinds of comments. It actually stimulates her sexual development. The data shows that she starts menstruating earlier, she matures faster. That’s a whole other topic.”

Semaj further argued that the kind of gap and “incest taboo” that natural exists between father and daughter is not there between stepfather and stepdaughter.

“You hear many times that the stepfather defence is, ‘She pushed herself on me.’ Now, that is no excuse, because he’s an adult and she’s a child. But lots of men, because of the juvenile nature of their own sexuality, many will fall prey to that because they don’t understand what is happening with the teenager.”