pedophile: (child-lover) One who is sexually attracted to prepubescent children. The term is misused to also mean one who has sex with postpubescent minors. One attracted to young but postpubescent people is properly an ephebophile (youth-lover). The Catholic priests that have been preying on young Catholics, for example, are all or almost all ephebophiles, not pedophiles.

The legal fiction of equating sex with minors and sex with prepubescent children saves us from having to think too much about adolesccent sexuality.