Age of consent has come up in a couple threads recently and has gotten me thinking. Many countries have lower ages of consent then the US a few as young as 12. Some counties has legalized prostitution. Hopefully if a country has both they have a legal age to prostitute different then the age of consent. I found no readily available chart on any site I’d consider going to.
In addition to that question is the US capable of taking legal action against someone who travels to a country for the purposes of having sex with a girl younger then 16?
Not restricting this to prostitution. Are child molesters of the US heading off to other countries where they can legally do what we find to be a crime here. Do country’s with low ages of consent set different ages of consent for non-citizens?
IIRC there have been several “sex tourist” prosecutions but the US usually tries to get the host country to prosecute. SE Asian countries seem to be a magnet for this sort of thing.
There was a very wealthy older American who died several years ago and he had fathered numerous babies with 11-13 year olds (he paid big money for virgins) in some SE Asian country. My google fu is failing me re his name. There we several pics of this villages where all these little girls had his babies they were carrying on thier hips. Weird and sad.
I think the OP is asking about the youngest legal prostitutes. Are there countries where prositution is perfectly legal (as opposed to the police just looking the other way)? And if so, what are the age limits? And if those limits are under 18, can you be prosecuted under US sex tourism laws for going to one of those countries to have sex with an under-18 prosititute?
NOTE: I’m only asking academically. I have no intention of putting this information to use.
Yes, you can and will still be prosecuted for having sex with someone under 18 (even if the age of consent is different in your current country and/or your home state.) The name of the law involved is the Protect Act.
As an American abroad, I’ve been warned quite strongly and with many examples about what could happen if that law is broken.
The fundamental thing is that even if were legal in a country you are visiting, more and more governments, and certainly the US and Canada, are legislating that their citizens will be prosecuted in their home countries if they are caught having sex with child prostitutes while abroad.
Can you give a quick summary of what is different? My only understanding of this comes only from the stern lectures they give Peace Corps volunteers before sending us off. I’m curious what the reality is.
Sure. It appears from my (admittedly incomplete) reading that the Act applies to:
where
It appears the intent of the law is to curtail sex tourism, rather than prosecute the guy who happens to get lucky with a 16-year-old on his vacation trip.
What I’m getting out of this so far is US citizens traveling to other countries can be prosecuted in the US for having sex outside the US with non-us citizens under 18.
That seems fine by me. While we may have lower consent ages in the US seems like a good idea to have a higher standard to prevent us from screwing around with other countries youths.
Question still not answered is what country has the youngest legal prostitutes. Is there any country in which a person under the age of 18 can sell themselves sexually without violating the law of that land?
IAMNALawyer, so this is just a WAG, but I think that lower “age-of-consent” in Asian/African countries only applies to official marriages. I doubt that prostitution in Thailand or nearby countries is officially allowed, it’s only mostly ignored (partly because of corruption).
So even in local law sleeping with a 14 year old for money might be forbidden, only not enforced, which is why the Western Countries with more clout try to persecute this at home to stop this exploitative tourism.
Since apparently, nobody answered that : yes, plenty.Mine, for one, and as far as I know, most of Europe. I’m aware of only one European country where prostitution is illegal (the “customer” can be prosecuted), and that would be Norway.
The Wikipedia article on prostitution in Sweden says that it’s illegal to purchase sexual services there. So, while it might be technically legal to be a prostitute in countries like Sweden and the UK, in practice law enforcement treats it as a criminal enterprise.
