I personally believe that there are people who can manipulate adults into doing things so what happens if they do that to a child? I don't know.
But have you noticed, scarlet cocoagirl, that except in rare instances when adults are mentally challenged in some way (e.g., mental retardation), they are more or less always given the benefit of the doubt simply because of their chronological age if they say they consented and wasn't harmed by a sexual experience?
What if young people of any age could prove, via a competency test of some sort (as Robert Epstein and others have suggested, and which youth lib organization ASFAR now supports), that they are competent enough to make their own sexual decisions, or at the very least deserve the benefit of the doubt if they insist they had consented to a sexual interaction with either a peer or an adult, and no conflicting evidence can be exhibited? As long as the test was conducted by multiple objective hands, and was reasonable, and all kids had the right to take it if they wanted to acquire a certification allowing their sexual rights (and all other civil rights too, of course), then the concept of an age of consent should not apply to those kids who received certification for proving their competence in this manner.
Moreover, since it's been well known for a long time--the APA mentioned this in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the late 1980s in regards to an argument that adolescents should be able to consent to abortion without parental permission--that adolescents as young as 11 are capable of informed consent in such matters. Hence, if they had full access to objective and comprehensive sex education and support networks, then they should be given the benefit of the doubt without having to take a competency test, with perhaps age 11 or 12 being the beginning point of automatic emancipation if they so choose to accept it, unless they choose not to due to personal, cultural, religious, and other individual matters that are important to them. Please note that I have never said that emancipation, either partial or full, should be automatically foisted on kids like it is on people today when they reach their 18th birthday.
The Rind Report and its subsequent duplication in (I believe) 2005 made it clear that older pre-pubescents, say from age 6 and up, are capable of what MHPs [Mental Health Professionals] refer to as simple consent, meaning they clearly know the difference between a coercive and consensual experience with either peers or adults, and that the matter of consent has a major effect on the outcome of the interaction before synthetic sociogenic and iatrogenic factors come into play (and even then, they often, though not always, maintain their individual feelings on the matter rather than allowing themselves to change their minds on the outcome of the experience based upon societal condemnation or the intervention of agenda-driven social workers and other MHPs). Hence, it's reasonable to surmise that many pre-pubescents could take such a competency test and pass it, and should be allowed to do so any time they express a desire to take the test. Fees for such tests, if any, should be extremely reasonable so that synthetic factors such as individual income level do not effect the ability of kids to take the test, and fees should be waived in cases where extreme financial hardship can be shown.
Some youth liberationists, including some on this board, dislike the requirement of tests, and Sven Bonnichson adroitly pointed out that part of the reason we want to assign competency tests to kids is because we automatically think that tests are something they should take based on how important they are considered in the current totalitarian elementary and secondary school system. Nevertheless, even though I do not think such tests would be ideal, and probably should not be required forever, they are a good alternative to the situation of across the board, arbitrary prohibition based solely upon chronological age and no other factor that we have today, and they could prove that younger people are typically competent when it comes to regulating their own lives.
As for very young children, such as toddlers, it's highly unlikely any of them would request taking one of those competency tests, and though I DO NOT condemn nepiophilia, I think the jury is still out when it comes to very young children like toddlers like 4-year-olds as to their ability to consent and what types of sexual activities with adults would be safe for them to engage in, but I encourage understanding and objective research to be conducted on this subject in the future instead of simple condemnation.