I've had the same question. The girl was fourteen and her sister was eleven, by most reports - but referring to her as a woman makes the soldiers look better. A woman is an adult; an attack on a woman can be excused away more easily than an attack on a child. Our culture prizes children (or the idea of children, at least) over all else. Calling the victim a child would be admitting that what our boys did has no defense.

What I find interesting is this: the insurgents who killed two U.S. soldiers in retaliation for the death of this child and her family are referred to as evil terrorists with no regard for human life. But the soldiers who raped and killed a 14-year-old and her 11-year-old sister are called heroes. Tarnished heroes, but good brave men nonetheless.

with a vague notion of fourteen year old girls possibly being considered "women" in Iraqi society let me just say we're not in Iraqi society. At the very least we could have the decency to refer to the teen as a minor.

I am not surprized that the rape victim is still being refered to as a "woman" and for the clear reason that raping a woman is seen as less appalling as raping a 14 year old child.

I am just surprised she and her dead family are not refered to as suspected insurgents - aren't all dead Iraquis called that until proven otherwise?

This has really been bugging since her age became clear: in addition to being rapists and murders then men who did this are pedophiles. I’m at a loss as to why most of the media seems to be ignoring this aspect of the crime.

How the women at Broadsheet feel about having Woody Allen's new movie advertised on their "sheet". How old was Mia Farrow's daughter when Woody began his affiar with her?

To say that the reports are calling the victim a woman because it sounds better is overly sensitive to me. I don't think rape sounds any better or worse for a young woman or a girl. I can say that my 14 year old son's female friends look like young women to me....not girls. Apparently that makes me a pedophile ? Can one of the feministas define what age a girl becomes a "young woman" ?

is shilling for the military when it calls the rape victim a young woman. I think that reporters referred to her as a young woman when her age was uncertain or in dispute, and while many of them corrected themselves and referred to her as a girl or a teenager, others just overlooked it and used the same description they had used in their original story. As of today, the WaPo also refers to the victim as a girl, as does the NYT, the LA Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, and the AP.

And the military isn't downplaying it--these guys are being charged with rape and murder, and if they are convicted, they face the death penalty. I'm pretty sure that no one in the military thinks that a group of guys who raped and murdered a 14-year-old and killed her family are heroes.

So some of you are seriously arguing that newspapers that openly cite her age as 14 are calling her a "young woman" instead of a "teen" in order to make it sound better? To make it sound better that they raped her, killed her, and killed her family?

Sometimes, I truly wonder whether people have enough to do. I know MANY programs aimed at empowering teenagers that would refer to a 14-year-old as a "young woman." Try Googling the phrase "young women between the ages of," and you'll see a BAZILLION places where 14 is within the definition of a "young woman" that have nothing to do with rape, including a Planned Parenthood camp and several feminist projects. Sports camps, recognition programs, church programs, health resources, education programs, anti-violence programs, and more. Calling a 14-year-old a "young woman" is not a misuse of language that means a damn thing. I'm all for vigilance, but this is an overreaction.

I understand what the original post is saying (which at least isn't, unlike several of the comments, that the newspapers are intentionally minimizing the rape), and I agree that language matters. But 14 is a teenager. I completely disagree that anyone is intentionally calling her a "young woman" out of some anti-woman bias. I really can't see anybody saying, "Okay, in this story about how they raped her, killed her, and killed her family, including a baby, is there a way to make that seem a little less bad? I know -- we'll call her a 'young women' instead of a 'teen.'"

I think the newspapers you're trying to shame are, frankly, owed an apology. "Young women" for 14-year-olds is standard in many settings, including, as I said, a Planned Parenthood camp. This is a misfire, and it's terribly unfair to suggest that these newspapers are up to anything other than using language much the way many other people use it. The stakes are high in a situation like this. You might at least employ Google to see whether you're going off for no reason.

Just be glad this story is getting such widespread attention. Haditha and other massacres have been largely ignored, despite the higher death tolls. While it's a horribly tragedy that it took the rape of a 14-year-old female to focus attention on the US military's heinous war crimes, at least people are finally hearing about it.

Of course the crazy feministas are probably gonna be all up in arms over THAT too. When are they gonna understand that our fighting men are over there raping so that the terrorists can't rape them over here. No, them vessels be our'n.

In the US the victim would be referred to as a minor. The fact that she is referred to as everything other than that shouldn't surprise anyone--the press has a history of using loaded terms to describe victims. (Remember the Abner "The Haitian Immigrant" Louima? Or in recent new "the Stripper" at Duke?)

California seems to define a child as 15 yrs or younger when it comes to sex crimes though sex offenses with a person under 16 and/or with a person under 18 are also descriptors used in California penal codes. [e.g. Aggravated sexual assault child under 14 to violate 286 by force or fear (269(a)(3)); Lewd or lascivious acts with child 14 or 15 years old (288(c)(1)); Sexual penetration with foreign object: Victim under 16 (289(i)); Sexual penetration with foreign object: Victim under 18 (289(h)).]

In North Carolina, a 16 yr old is considered a child [(GS 14-202.1, Class F felony) Indecent and lewd acts with a child under age 16.] In Texas, where one of the perpetrators is from, persons under 17 are considered children [21.11. INDECENCY WITH A CHILD. (a) A person commits an offense if, with a child younger than 17 years and not the person's spouse, whether the child is of the same or opposite sex...]

The "age of consent" varies from 15-18 in most states in the US when considering statutory rape violations--that fact is also a good indicator of who we view as children and who we view as adults.