"The reason I have her mentioning the ongoing sex is to create a situation where the police have probable cause to think something really bad is going on."

A ) They aren't telepaths. Ongoing or onetime, it is still an allegation. ( And given the travel situation, one which is much less easy to tie together by one officer in one jurisdiction. But as far as THAT goes, you'd have to address the parental "right" to uproot a child at any time. )

B ) The ongoing aspect depends on his custodial rights over her.

As ever, you bend reality unto breaking to keep only those things in your hypotheticals that serve to illustrate your point while denying any features, no matter how essential to the premise, that undermine your point.

No custody, no ongoing, regardless of why you chose it. If your real premise was "child liberationist proposals" then there is no custody and no ongoing. But since "ongoing" is necessary to your premise, you jettison any pretense of entertaining child liberationist proposals before you start. Hence JD's Straw Man allegations you prefer not to reply to.

"Radical child liberation is not a reality, so I raise this case as one where the wrong thing would happen IF it were a reality."

Not even trying.

You impose it on broadly drawn fictions, on a situation created by parental ownership and ignoring calls for the right to leave.

You Straw Man so strenuously we can hear the sound of reality buckling. Meanwhile you feel free to ignore real girls with real names in real cases from the foster-care system. Who cares about the fiction when real girls are suffering? .... aside from you?

"I can make the case clearer by positing the current system as improved to the point where it has excellent foster care."

For the purpose of a fiction you will. But if anyone demands that the real system be fundamentally altered you will slander their motives and undermine any effort at change as you always do.

Because we know that systemic change depends on a challenge to the authority of the vested interests. And often requires an entire removal of a blight rather than an improvement.

The workhouses of the poor in Dickens' time. The houses for unmarried pregnant teens in Ireland in the 50s. They were so rife with abuse due to their very structure. They needed drastic overhauls and in most cases outright removal. But for your selfish needs it is a political non-starter to call for anything so "radical" as a review of the foundations of a system in which children are raped and abused in such great numbers. All that abuse is "basically good" because the State only wants what's best.

So you propose a retreat from the real consequences of your solution as part of a critique of any alternative.

"There is a role for the state to hold onto her long enough to help her make a more informed choice."

Oh, they've already done THAT one. Jailing a teen for as long as it takes until a confession about her adult BF is coerced from her. But again, you punish children for having the nerve to disagree with what you believe they should want.

Even in theory, the foster-care system is not supposed to be a brainwashing facility on par with Amerind boarding schools of the early 20th century. ( THAT'S what the caseworker is there for. ) But I will concede that your depraved mind can make something horribly bad into something even worse.

"But like any good novel, it paints some parts of reality with enough clarity to be of real interest."

Yes. Unfortunately all manner of superficial readers have drawn the notion that its about Pedophilia, or can shed any light on Pedophilia. Its really not.

No moreso than Naked Lunch is a case-study of the life of an insect exterminator in the 50s.

Dante