Yes but many times it's "become my friend and I will teach you how to escape and eventually fight back".
The 'fight back' bit is somewhat problematic in this game though, and I'm not sure how many of those padawans/younglings under your wing realise this.
Unless they're willing to go all-in on a bespoke PvP combat build and fly that going forward, in anything else, even a dedicated combat PvE ship they will not see results even against weak-ish gankers who don't fly in a wing, simply because the game of rock-paper-scissors required to counter whatever you're facing can become quite frustrating.
I dip my toes into PvP every now and again, and I have to admit that as much as I enjoy some organic combat arising eg. the current CG being a good setup for this, more often than not the only option is to retreat, because almost all gankers run the kind of ships most PvE builds, as sturdy as they might be, are completely useless against, from an offensive viewpoint at least. And even if you're lucky, the ganker then usually runs if shields drop to a ring (or entirely thanks to torps), at least in my experience.
You could theoretically count that as a victory, but it's as shallow as it gets, with nothing to show for at all. And that's usually only if you limit your playstyle to PvP with all that that entails (even just
finding gankers can be a test of patience, made worse with the ongoing instancing issues).
Just thought it's worth pointing out if nothing else - the whole idea of getting revenge on those bad boys that wronged you is all but a pipedream, especially if they're cheesing existing game mechanics (ship builds and combat tactics)
and are decent pilots. Would love to be proven wrong about this but in my experience there's no way to win without sacrificing your entire playstyle if you're not 100% dedicated to PvP (I play 90% PvE, 10% 'PvP' i.e. cat-and-mouse at best).