Stranger on a train

<<The American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) criteria for Pedophilia (302.2) are:

A. Over a period of at least 6 months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger);

B. The person has acted on these sexual urges, or the sexual urges or fantasies cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty;

C. The person is at least age 16 years and at least 5 years older than the child or children in Criterion A.>>

Questions I’m pondering on the train to Washington to learn more about the John Jay report and attend a USCCB press conference (sadly, unlike certain other news outlets which shall remain nameless, America was not handed a clandestine pre-release of the report):

Why such a broad deviation from the DSM? (John Jay defines as 10 and under, thus “erasing” something close to half the assaults from pedophilia classification)

Does anyone think an 11 or 12, even 13 year old constitutes a “youth,” not a child?

And why is so much attention being paid to this in the first place? Don’t we have a common sense appreciation for who a child is and what sexual assault looks like?

Can John Jay researchers cite any other parallel historical or cultural phenom when “stress” and “social confusion” and “poor monitoring” led to the sexual assault of children? The whole premise seems more than a little odd to me.