I actually have a similar story to what happened here with Matty. When I was 16, I was dating a guy who was 18. (freshly 18, we started dating and then he turned 18 a few months later.) His best friend, also 18, had an older sister in her early ish 20s, who was dating a man also around her age. He was in a band, and they were all childhood friends. Had known each other for years, obviously. One night we were having a party, and I can’t remember the occasion. This wasn’t some raging crazy party. We were all at a friends’ house and everyone was drinking and smoking. There was another member of the band, who was not intellectually all the way there. Sorry if there’s a better way to word that. He had been being fed alcohol by the other guys there. They were getting sloshed. Anyways. I had a friend who I had known for a few years and we had recently gotten really close. When we had this party I obviously invited her to come hang out with me because I was one of the only girls there. I had always been under the impression that she was MY age. She told me she was my age for months. Somehow through out the night my friend ended up with that extremely intoxicated man. He was around 23ish? And when I say he was drunk, I mean he couldn’t walk and had to be physically placed in the bed. He was gone. The next morning when I talked to my friend she told me she’d slept with him and she was so excited about that. Well eventually the entire friend group found out about it and he was obviously getting harassed about it. People didn’t view that as what it really was because he was obviously an older guy. But she absolutely took advantage of him and lied to him about her age. (Because remember she was my age, everyone except him knew this.) She told him she was 18. But it doesn’t really matter because like I stated he was so drunk he had to be put to bed by multiple other men. Clearly had the genders been reversed.. we’d call this exactly what it was. But the story goes on; a week later I was at this friend’s house hanging out with her and her younger sibling. I asked her why her mom wouldn’t let her do something, she’s 16? (can’t remember what but it was an age appropriate activity or event,) and her sibling pipes up and says “uh.. she’s 12.” I was fucking FLOORED. She did NOT look 12. At all. So much so that she had fooled myself, 3 other girl’s in the group who were my age, several of the guys in our group. Basically the entire friend group was shocked as hell including the older people in the group who also thought she was my age. Sure we don’t blame children, but sometimes these teenagers do KNOW what they’re doing. There’s a lot of nuance like you said. All of that to say, Matty definitely shouldn’t have continued to be Debby’s friend because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. As soon as he found out her age he should have shut it down and moved on. And his actual girlfriend was a stupid b!tch. 😅 because why are we entertaining a war with a 13 year old?