I want to clarify that this isn’t me just worldbuilding nitpicking—I think it’s a plot point that is at odds with most of the intended themes of the story.
The idea that there’s a boundary that’s just too sacred that basically nobody will cross it out of respect for inherent human dignity and privacy seems jarringly naive and suggests that the people of Lyra’s world have more respect for the autonomy of children and other demi-people than they do in our world, which we know isn’t true. Lyra’s world has slavery, sex traffickers, sanitariums, police, imperialism, patriarchy, and the Church.
Touching someone’s daemon without consent doesn’t damage them physically but is described as uniquely degrading and violating—of course it would be used as a means of social control and punishment. Since when has that stopped parents? The state?
There’s no way the guard who touched Pan at Bolvanger was doing something remarkable for an authority figure to do to someone who’s been institutionalized. Degradation and domination is the point and is utterly normalized and ultimately celebrated. Sure, Lyra’s just a child, but kids know that murder and rape and violence are things that can and do happen to people. The idea that she’s never encountered or even heard of people who’ve been abused despite being an unsupervised wild child who fraternizes with huge gangs of other children and gets drunk with her friends at age 11 is implausible.
