A fly in the logical argument is that with increases in available nutrition vis-a-vis caloric density of available food, it's skewing the onset of puberty toward younger children. 18 used to be the cutoff because that's when puberty was most likely to start, on average. It was never really about emotional maturity, at least until recently (AND A GOOD CHANGE IT WAS!). Puberty is a body mass coded trigger, not so much an age related one. I think I heard of one medical case where a girl who was only 8 years old had begun puberty because she had gained so much weight by that point. An outlier, for sure, but the point still stands. I'd say these sickos need to learn some basic self regulation, but then again we are talking about group of people who have outsourced their morality to an imaginary metaphysical "presence" in the sky. Personal accountability was never really a strong compass in their lives, clearly.