A staffer at TMZ Sports says

A woman has come forward in the Lawrence Taylor case to say the NFL legend did not have sex with the 16-year-old girl he is accused of raping.

The witness — a 23-year-old stripper who says she was living with the 16-year-old girl and her alleged pimp at the time — gave a sworn statement to investigators from the defense team, saying she was waiting outside the hotel at the time of the alleged incident. According to the AP, the woman says the teenager returned to the car with $300 in cash and said, “It was weird … we didn’t even have sex.”

Read the quote in context here.

According to another source, nfl.fanhouse.com, the defense witness claims “Taylor rubbed himself on the girl, but they did not have sex.” Which, I guess, is supposed to make it all better.

At the end of the day, though, what really matters… what the case boils down to… what’s wrong with the entire picture can be summed up in something else the woman is reported to have been concerned about. Again from the nfl.fanhouse newswire

The woman said in her statement that she did not come forward initially because she worried she would get in trouble because she knew the girl was underage.

Um. Yeah. She was living with this 51-year-old pimp and a 16-year-old girl she knew he was pimping, she accompanied the girl and the pimp to a customer’s hotel room and stood outside waiting while an act of teen prostitution took place. If it wasn’t for the evident fact that the word “prostitution” magically washes away all traces of “statutory rape,” “sexual assault of a child,” “sex offender registry,” “corruption of a minor,” and every other offense prosecutors, judges, and juries are usually (and, I think, correctly) willing to throw at people who have sex with minors, the woman had every reason to worry she’d get in trouble.

For that matter I’m really inclined to question (but certainly not challenge) the rape charges leveled against Taylor in the first place. It’s extremely unusual for prosecutors to charge johns with sexual assault… even when the johns commit violent assault against adult sex workers rather than statutory sexual assault against minor ones.

I’m not knocking their decision because I think it’s a really good idea to hold johns accountable for not meticulously verifying the age of the sex workers they hire. (Taylor claims he asked and the girl told him she was 19. Which doesn’t wash in my book — if she’d said she was Mother Theresa he’d probably have asked to see her ID so…)

But it’s so unusual I’m curious about the particulars that led to this, well, particular charge being brought.

Anyway, bottom line here is that a) yes, whatever one can say about voluntary, entrepreneurial sex work there are also sex workers who are conscripted and coerced, sometimes by violence, b) yes, whatever one can say about consenting adults we do not say the same thing about minors, even consenting ones, and c) while it’s laudable that prosecutors appear to be charging Lawrence with rape and the pimp with sex trafficking they’re still failing to bring with perfectly-accurate and well-deserved charges against them for crimes that would put them on sex-offender registries for life.

It’s perfectly possible to support legalizing the sale and purchase of sexual services from autonomous, uncoerced adults (as I am, even though I’m not terrifically enthusiastic about it) while also supporting draconian measures against the sale or purchase of sexual access to the bodies of those who are conscripted, coerced, trafficked, or otherwise unable to freely and legally consent.

It’s a mistake to imagine that rape is the right word for voluntary commercial sexual services. It’s an even bigger mistake to imagine any other word will do for those who are coerced into sexual servitude.