The only problem I have with that is... we have some friends whose son was a senior in high school and he was dating a freshman. Her parents found out they were sexually active and pressed charges. He ended up with a conviction for having sex with his underage girlfriend and had to register as a sex offender.
That was before the law changed that for a certain age difference it was not punishable with a lower limit of something like 15 or 16 and no more than 3-4 years difference in age.
So, for something like this I would want to know the details.
It's a case where he was in his 20s and the girl was 16 and the parents caused the trouble.
However... He was still tried, convicted, and registered as an offender.
No matter what you or I think, he in the eyes of the law, is a convicted felon and registered sex offender.
What can you really do at that point? I mean allowing them to stay can and probably would backfire and harm your online reputation. People, especially nowadays, would tear you apart regardless of the situation.
No one reads into anything. You're an ex-LE, I'm an investigator. We're trained to read into things, but the average John and Jane Doe aren't reading into anything, they're judging books by their cover, making assumptions, and getting onto their soap box to tell the world and then everyone just follows them because that's what people tends to do.
So, my action really might have been the only response to make in order to keep the hounds away.
No mass population is going to take up for the offender, no matter the nature of the offense.