Charlie Bell wrote:
On Mar 22, 2006, at 11:02 AM, PAT MATHEWS wrote:
And in the UK (lost the attribution) a boy of 13 was accused of
statuatory rape for having consensual sex with a girl of 11-going- on-12.
But in the UK the age of consent is 16. So if you're under 16, you
can't give consent legally. So you can't have consensual sex...
The tabs promptly headlined it leaving off the "statuatory." So she
was under the age of consent - so was he! Anyone hear of just
grounding them for the semester?
Stupid, isn't it? The law should protect the young and newly sexually
aware from predators, not punish them for doing what's natural. As the
Netherlands has shown, a lower age of consent coupled with proper sex
education actually raises the average age of first sex and reduces the
rate of teenage pregnancy.
The UK has a daft attitude to sex.
The laws in the US vary from state to state. Texas does something
fairly reasonable -- I've forgotten the age of consent, but if one
person is on one side and the other is on the other side, if the
difference in ages is a certain margin or less (again, I've forgotten
what that is -- I never had reason to worry about it here!), it's not
statutory rape. So if you're 2 months older than the age of consent and
you boink someone 3 months younger than you (i.e., younger than the age
of consent, but close to you in age) it's OK. And 2 people under the
age of consent going at it isn't considered statutory rape.
(I like the Netherlands solution.)
Julia
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