You all have good points. We don’t know what the relationship was really like before it was ended by the father, nor why the father felt it necessary to have someone take care of a fifteen-year old. I could make up more back story there, too.
This kind of thing is not universally considered child abuse around the world. The ages of consent are lower in other countries, even in European countries. So I don’t want it taken for granted that there is a universally acceptable age of consent. I don’t know what the right age of consent is. My daughter, who is 15, is old enough to know what she wants (and she doesn’t want a relationship).
I don’t know what was going on with this boy.
What does bother me is that the father seems to get off scott free, as if the blame was all on the baby sitter, and he was all innocent. It seems to me he wasn’t paying enough attention to his son, especially if the son had special needs. It sounds like he was completely angry when he found out, and shot from the hip. He didn’t even bother to find out anything about what was going on. But of course I don’t know that.
If the boy had problems, then they should have consulted with a professional when they did this, so the boy could have been assessed for suicide risk or other risks.
I don’t know. Perhaps this is just a kneejerk reaction and really, there’s too little to go on, but I don’t like the father and the way the father thought, or didn’t think. I don’t think it was all the baby sitter’s fault. The father had to lose his son, and that’s bad enough, except if he has a lot of responsibility for this, then I wish he could have learned how to be a better father long before this happened. The baby sitter is getting all the blame and I don’t think that’s justified based on what we know now.