'Girls don’t want to be prudes, but boys think sex is a game.’ 'Everyone has had sex or done something by [the time they’re 16] . . . that’s why we have house parties.’ ‘It’s very common for young men to take advantage of a woman.’

These are just a few quotes from the real-life teenagers who are featured in Is This Rape? — a television programme to be shown on Monday night on BBC3.

If you are a parent of teenagers, this is a show you must see. And, if you have the nerve and fortitude, watch alongside any of your offspring old enough to go to unsupervised parties.

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Debate: A new BBC programme, presented by Will Best (pictured), asks the audience and a panel of teenagers to decide whether or not a woman was raped in a fictional scenario

For it reveals how confused, vulnerable or — in some cases — wounded our young people are when it comes to sex. In this programme, they reveal how much of their social lives depends on a kind of desperate bravado about the subject. It provides a fascinating insight into the lives of today’s teenagers — and the damage our sex-soaked society is causing them.

Despite being on the youthful BBC3, the issues discussed are profoundly relevant to our age. It takes a mixed group of 16 to 18-year-olds — all bright, intelligent, pleasant, ordinary — away for three days. It then asks them to debate and vote on a three-part fictional playlet, set at your average teenage party.

If you are a parent of teenagers, this is a show you must see. And, if you have the nerve and fortitude, watch alongside any of your offspring old enough to go to unsupervised parties. Libby Purves

At the end of the party, a drunken girl, Gemma, goes to sleep on a sofa bed and is joined by Tom, a boy she knows. He is also drunk. He climbs on top of her and a sexual act — let’s just say oral sex — takes place.

Gemma is silent and unmoving throughout. It is two weeks before she reports it as rape. Our panel is then asked to vote on whether it really was an act of force.

In the process of doing so, the boys and girls — separately and together — make moral judgments and open up about their own experiences. They reveal how murky the sexual world they inhabit is — where consent, or ‘being up for it’ (as they put it), is very much seen in shades of grey.

They are also visited by two real-life witnesses. First, a young man who was falsely accused of rape before being completely cleared — but not before his life was destroyed. Then a girl who was raped while she was in a drunken stupor and who still bears the deep emotional scars today.

Yes, the programme will raise some eyebrows — and I say that because it is so explicit in parts. But also because, for my baby-boomer generation at least, there is a kind of shame in accepting that such a debate is necessary at all.

Why are young people today so confused about sex and consent? Are they so habitually free with their bodies that the only concern about an uncommitted, unplanned, loveless and drunken act is whether it has legal repercussions? Why do we have more sexually active under-18s than any other country in Europe?

After watching Is This Rape? I can tell parents out there that sex education in biology class is no longer enough for this generation. There needs to be proper conversation: serious warnings for both boys and girls.

Tempting though it is to be coy, to protect supposed ‘innocence’ or avoid the topic of sex, consent and rape entirely, it is a parent’s job to warn of risk. Not just the obvious physical or emotional risks, but the legal ones, too.

Otherwise your lovely son or daughter could all too easily find themselves being raped or accused of being a rapist.

For my parents’ generation, bringing up teenagers in the Sixties, it was easier. ‘No sex before marriage’ was the mantra of the day. Or, if parents were more liberal, ‘Not unless you’re seriously engaged’.

We youngsters, for our part, saw that the world was changing, what with Mick Jagger and the Pill and all that, and often ignored them.

But there was a general acceptance then that a girl set the snogging limits, and a half-decent boy accepted that. Parties saw a lot of heavy petting on heaps of coats, but rarely full sex. Only a minority of parents willingly let beds be shared ‘under our roof’, and then only when the pair were clearly going steady.

It reveals how confused, vulnerable or — in some cases — wounded our young people are when it comes to sex

How very different it is today.

Teenage sexual activity is regarded by many parents of over-16s as nothing to make a fuss about as long as the girl doesn’t get pregnant, infected, or revenge-porn-shamed on the internet. Teenagers’ smartphones flicker out photos and texted suggestions that would once have been seized at customs or kept in a locked library cabinet.

And, of course, a torrent of dehumanising, mechanistic, often brutal and sadistic pornography is available at the click of a computer button. Videos of every variation imaginable are giggled over in playgrounds. Porn is designed to give the impression that the girls like it and accept everything as a matter of course.

That they’re being paid to engage in these activities, being reduced to dehumanised sex toys without personalities, is something the young viewers all too often may not understand.

It is horribly easy for boys in particular to get the idea that sex is like that: an unloving entitlement, as emotionless as kicking a football against a wall.

And it probably doesn’t help if they happen to pick up Mum’s copy of Fifty Shades Of Grey. (No, they won’t be turning to the bits where she loves and pities the sadistic damaged creep. Just the other bits.)

Is This Rape? is the opposite of a normal group reality show. Soberly hosted, showing clips of long debates, it demonstrates how valuable it can be when kids are actually invited to discuss morals and feelings, and given evidence on which to make their own judgments.

Some viewers will be startled by the teenagers recounting their experiences and opinions . . .

‘Oral sex isn’t as bad as penetration . . . she gave him signs.’

‘If you’re friends with someone and you know they’ve done something like that [where the girl wasn’t willing], you don’t want to spread it around or tell anyone ’cos they’re your friend.’

‘There are 12 girls here and all of us have either had this [been forced into a sexual act] happen to us or known someone it’s happened to.’

The film is shown in three segments: the party takes place in the first, the questioning of Gemma in court in the second and the questioning of Tom in the third. There is a vote among the panel after each section.

'Real issue': Numerous women's rights groups have warned that people do not fully understand what constitutes rape and what doesn't in the eyes of the law. Pictured, new BBC Broadcasting house in London

The first vote is on the question: ‘Is this rape? Or did Gemma agree to what just happened?’

The boys are divided.

‘He raped her — there was no consent ’cos she was unresponsive.’

‘Yeah, but he was being led on, because she didn’t push him off.’

‘He seemed like a normal guy, heat of the moment, he went for it.’

‘She was afraid of him! Submission isn’t a sign of consent, it’s just a sign of weakness . . . ’

Some struggled with the idea of it being rape. ‘He semi-raped her,’ says one. Another: ‘80-20 [rape] perhaps? The word rape, that’s quite harsh . . . he saw an opportunity and he took it.’

The girls are divided, too, by the fact Gemma knew Tom and had sex with him before, that she could have pushed him off and was giving mixed signals by smiling and looking at him during the party. He ‘got confused and was drunk’.

Most unnerving is that several girls reported: ‘We’ve all been in a situation [where the boy is pressing for sex] and you think, oh, OK, can’t be bothered, whatever.’

Not one seemed concerned that the act gave no pleasure at all to the girl. Indeed, that bothered me almost more than anything else.

The other sections of the drama, where Gemma has reported the rape and both she and Tom are in court, are even more revealing. We learn about their previous sexual contact and about an ‘intimate’ photo she had once sent him on Snapchat. We hear that she snogged Tom’s best friend on the night of the party. We see her, upset at the defence barrister’s firm questioning, saying ‘I just froze’ and trying to downplay her flirty texts.

All are shocked by the experience of the young man brought in to tell them about being falsely accused of rape.

The debate gets fierier among our panel on the question ‘Did Tom believe he had consent?’ Some are scornful of the rape claim because it was two weeks before she rang the police — until one girl comes right out and reveals that it took her a year to report the fact that she had been raped.

Her raw experience feeds into the boys’ understanding of how deep the shock and shame of this invasion is.

But having seen the formality of the courtroom, the youngsters are torn. They’re worried that ‘his life will be ruined for a misunderstanding . . . rape is a big word.’ Some are firm that the girl has a responsibility; others say how easy it is to freeze, especially when you are drunk, just to let things happen.

The word ‘misunderstanding’ comes up a lot. The girls have to tell some of the boys: ‘You don’t necessarily want to have sex with someone just because you’re kissing.’ Poor kids. Nobody should need to point that out, but today clearly they do.

All are shocked by the experience of the young man brought in to tell them about being falsely accused of rape. On bail, broke, his life and business collapsed, his family traumatised, ‘the bank closed my account, I was thrown into the dark ages’.

Today, if he wants to be intimate with a woman, he actually records them verbally giving him consent, so worried is he about having the same nightmare unfold again.

The girls on the panel flinch at understanding how enormous the implications are of setting in motion such an accusation.

It is hard not to think about the awful recent case of Jay Cheshire, a 17-year-old boy who committed suicide after being falsely accused of rape, even after the allegation had been quickly withdrawn.

Some of the panel, still hating the ‘R’ word, say the crime should be reduced to sexual assault.

In the third part, Tom is questioned and quavers: ‘She wasn’t upset or anything, it was all fine.’

Detail is mercilessly sought. ‘Where were his hands? Where were hers?’ The video shows Tom’s hands on the back of Gemma’s head, hers lying motionless by her side. Complainant and accused are both reduced to tears.

Again and again, nearly all the girls on the panel say that something like this has happened to them or to someone they know.

One says she would be afraid to report such an act for fear of being questioned about what she was wearing and how drunk she was.

They have their final vote: ‘Is Tom a rapist?’

Terrible word. ‘You think of a vile monster, not a boy who did one bad thing,’ says one boy.

But the girl among them who was raped replies flatly: ‘[Rape] is actually torturing someone. What this is, is rape, OK?’

I won’t reveal whether Tom is found guilty of rape — watch on Monday to find out — but what I can say is that the whole programme is overwhelmingly powerful.

If I still had teenage children of either sex, I’d certainly want them to see it. The party depicted is not some extreme drugged orgy; it’s pretty ordinary. The kids in the film, and the real ones giving their verdict, are bright, warm, decent — and sometimes daft.

But they live in a culture drenched in sexual images, which insidiously separates sex from love, trust, intimacy and commitment.

They have to navigate their way not only through dangerous emotional whirlpools, but the rocks and reefs of the law. They need to think about this stuff. By the end of the programme, they do.

Last word, perhaps, should go to the lovely blond, round-faced, curly-haired chap who stares into the camera at the end, clearly shaken by what he has seen and discussed, and says: ‘Have I done this? Have I raped someone and not known it?’