DEAR PRUDENCE

Q. Honey trap: I am getting divorced from my wife. It’s not acrimonious, just sad. However, I don’t want to be the “loser” in the divorce, so I’ve been going on some dates.

Last week, my younger brother (he’s 24, I’m 37) called me and said he’d met this woman at his job who was perfect for me. Similar age to me, similar interests, really cute! I saw her picture and she looked like a model, but I assumed that there were some filters applied since it was from social media. Then I turned up at the restaurant and she was clearly not in her 30s, and after I sat down and briefly spoke to her, she was clearly not an adult. I ended up hiding in the toilet and calling my wife. She drove over and took the girl’s phone to call her dad, and it turns out she was 15. Apparently my brother had paid her to go on this date, but when her dad pressed for details on what was meant to happen, she clammed up.

I have no idea what to do next. My relationship with my brother has always been fine; we’ve not fallen out over anything, and there’s no family business or inheritance that he could want to disinherit me from. My parents say he won’t talk to them about it, and want me to just drop it since it was just a bad prank.

Except it obviously wasn’t! I could have been arrested, even though I would not have done anything (the girl was dressed to the nines, but was still obviously way too young to be there), the optics were obviously bad. And what if he pulls this “prank” on someone else and a child gets hurt? Why is he even giving 15-year-olds money online anyhow?

My wife thinks I should call the police and tell them what happened (the girl’s dad would rather not, but has agreed to back up my account if I want to take it that way). I think she’s probably right, if only to have a background if he does anything else, but I don’t know? It just feels surreal, because I really can’t think why my brother would have done this or even thought about it. I just keep stalling out on doing anything, because I just can’t imagine how to explain this when NOTHING HAPPENED to motivate it?

A: I’m not sure there’s a lot the police could do in this situation or what use it would be to have this report on the record if your brother were to do something illegal in the future.

So you can skip that. But also, obviously, never trust your brother to do anything for you again. Whatever he may or may not be doing with underage girls in his personal life, he is, at the very least, a predator who thinks it’s acceptable for teens to date grown men — and that’s enormously concerning.