Remember, they're not being forced to read anything, there's generally little peer pressure in the vein of "Man, you've gotta read this book; all the cool kids are doing it," and reading takes more of a concentration of effort than sitting in a movie theater for a couple of hours.


So, if the story is engaging their interest, then... yes. What exactly do you think is going to happen? How exactly is one "ready" to read a story that has a description of rape?


Should they wait until someone they know is raped? Or when they've watched a few episodes of Law and Order: SVU? I'm not saying that there's an established curriculum, or that "rape" is on the checklist of "things to know about before you turn 18," but... of course you're going to know what rape is before you turn 18. It's just another terrible thing in the world, and at some point, you learn what it is.

This is getting a bit far afield from what I was saying, but I think an argument could be made that reading a story in which something happens is a much better primer for controversial topics than anything else.