Anyone who thinks Nathan is as terrible as Mr. Jefferson is or considers him irredeemable is not taking into account the harmful repercussions that unhealthy boundaries between teenagers and authority figures can have on a person’s mental state.
To quote Lundy Bancroft who, although referring to heterosexual romantic relationships between adults and teenagers but whose points can be applied in equal measure to the relationship between Nathan and Mr. Jefferson says:
“Why for example, does [an older] man pursue a [younger] adolescent? Because he is stimulated by her? Obviously not. They are at completely different developmental points in life with a dramatic imbalance in their levels of knowledge and experience. He is attracted to power and seeks a partner who will look up to him with awe and allow him to lead her. Of course, he usually tells her the opposite, insisting that he wants to be with her because of how unusually mature and sophisticated she is for her age. He may even compliment her on her sexual prowess and say how much power she has over him, setting up the young victim so that she won’t recognize what is happening to her. Even without a chronological age difference, some abusive men are drawn to women who have less life experience, knowledge, or self-confidence, and who will look up to the man as a teacher or mentor.”
Nathan has done some terrible things he should be held accountable for but the fact is is that he is a young teenage boy being used as an accomplice by an adult with considerable power over him.
If this were Nathan doing these things on his own then it would be a different story altogether -- but it’s not, he’s being manipulated and abused by an older man who knows exactly what he’s doing. This isn’t like the Steubenville case where a bunch of teenagers decided to commit an adult crime without influence from an outside party.
All it does is show that you have no idea how power dynamics work and how harmful they can be when adults use them to manipulate and abuse children for their own gains.
