We say that children are unable to consent for two reasons:
Their minds are not yet well-enough formed to make rational decisions.
Their minds and/or our culture builds children to respect and obey people who are much older than themselves.
If we accept that both parties aren’t making rational decisions, because they’re both young, then prosecuting them doesn’t make sense.
There may be an overlapping period where children can make reasonable decisions, but in awe, would be prone to giving in to an adult. So it may be that while the popular conception is that people aren’t rational until they’re 18, based on our laws, we seem to have actually decided that it is lower than that (minus outside influence/predation).
That is exactly the idea behind statutory rape to begin with–a physical and mental power differential. But Romeo and Juliet laws are based on the exception where there might be non-coercive love involved.
It’s surely not just the idea that both parties lack consent. For instance, in my state, there’s no statutory rape unless one party is over the age of eighteen–even though the age of consent is sixteen, meaning that a sixteen year old has consent but a fifteen year old does not
Myself, I’d prefer to see an affirmative defense that the relationship was non-coercive and/or in the younger partner’s (and child’s if there is one involved) best interest(s) myself, regardless of age, because age limits are arbitrary.
I once handled a case where a young girl was extremely provocative and sexually acting out. She had numerous partners, and some were age appropriate (she was fourteen) but one was not at twenty-two. I was surprised that the parents of the girl supported the relationship with the 22 year old, which the state was condemning and prosecuting him for. At first I thought it was a mentally ill girl with perhaps not so mentally sound parents either, but they explained to me the situation and I wound up not being able to help agreeing.
The parents had known the 22 year old a long time and he was a good solid young man with a decent job and college educated. He had known the girl since infancy and in fact had always been a friend of the family. The parents were worried that their daughter would get pregnant from one of the younger irresponsible boys. They had allowed the girl contraceptives–condoms and the pill–but she wasn’t using them and maybe she intended to get pregnant. The parents were well read on the psychology involved and explained they thought their daughter sought to validate herself by becoming a mother. Of course they were against it, but they weren’t going to stick their heads in the sand and ignore reality that the girl was going to find a way and there was little they could do.
And the girl wanted to marry the 22 year old and not any of the boys more her age. She was the one with the idea–the guy had resisted her advances for two years. Therefore, the parents supported the marriage, but the state prosecuted first. They made me cry and I had to agree–that particularly relationship was not coercive even though it did have to do with the girl’s immaturity. It was the 22 year old’s parents that turned him in because they were against it.
I couldn’t help but agree that it made no sense to forbid the relationship where there was enough responsibility to raise a child to turn the girl toward more irresponsible procreation.
Life presents a lot of complex situations where the pat answers just don’t cut it.
At this point, and not just in response to your post, Captain Amazing, but all the others also mentioning “Romeo and Juliet laws” that they come in a wide variety, but they are all designed to lessen or eliminate criminal culpability where coercion is likely to not be involved.
This article notes Romeo and Juliet laws:
It left out the type of law my state has–the elimination of statutory rape where the older partner is over the age of eighteen (which ordinarily invokes statutory rape) but is within five years of age of the perceived victim. Thus a guy gets a possible pass till age twenty,
The law in the UK has created a fascinating quandary. Juveniles are allowed to consent to medical procedures and increasingly to have their views about which parent they live with from seven years of age onwards depending on their assessed competence. Yet they cannot consent to sex legally. This means that they have a right to contraception or termination of pregnancy without being treated as an incompetent minor, but may not then legally consent to sexual intercourse.
I think these “Romeo and Juliet” laws are also implemented in order to prevent aggrieved fathers prosecuting the boyfriends of their daughters. In what may well be a case of mutual concent these cases in the hands of a clever prosecutor can all too easily be turned into cases of non consensual sex. When does having a few beers turn into plying the young girl with alcohol? Its often a fine line.
The part that I’m missing here is where the guy who is old enough to be out of college has to have sex with with the middle school aged girl in order to be a good influence. Does he have a magic responsibility dick or something? Because I can’t think of any way that having an adult man who watched you grow up decide to bone a middle school aged child who is demonstrating dangerous and self-destructive sexual behavior (likely brought on by childhood abuse or serious mental illness) is doing anything but further fucking up her sexual identity.
The girl here needs depo, a psych eval and a good girls boarding school. And the man needs to stop thinking turning down a 12 year olds request for sex is “resisting her advances.”
I’ve been hearing this a lot lately, and as someone with a teenaged daughter who is in the older female generation, I don’t think its what this says - for most women. This portrays older women as jealous of a 15 year olds beauty.
I suspect it is more like “gee, I remember when I looked like that - and I remember how unaware I was of what is now the very obvious effect that young women have on men - older men. And I remember how screwed up I was at that age, and how easy it was to make bad decisions. And my friend Beth is 47 years old and is still screwed up over the relationship she had with a guy 15 years older when she was 15. And my friend Sarah has an abortion in her past which causes her shame from being sixteen and having a 21 year old boyfriend. And my friend Monica has grandchildren already - and her babydaddy moved with his wife out of state and it was always impossible to chase him for child support. And my friend Sisi struggled with infertility and always wondered if the clymidia she got caused it.”
Its the same reaction I have to the idea of my kids drinking - yeah, kids do it, I did it - and yet - older and wiser, I know parents who have lost kids to alcohol - I don’t want to lose mine.
I’m proud of my fifteen year olds nubile sexuality - she is beautiful…but its frightening because she doesn’t have the understanding of what she holds or the issues that can bring.
So you don’t think I’m sexist - I have the same concerns about my son - who is also beautiful to look at - and can also screw up his life right now in big ways. But he is less likely to be manipulated into sex he isn’t ready for by someone much older than he is.
My kids are also on the verge of driving - you know, until they are eighteen, their licenses are provisional and restricted. That makes sense, there is a lot of power in being behind the wheel and they don’t have the life experiences yet.
One of my good friends was well into his twenties when he saw a lovely woman and said “that is her.” SHE turned out to be sixteen. And they didn’t have sex until she was eighteen - yes, he managed to be celibate for two years waiting for her to be legal. And they married, and twenty years later, they are still married. If she was frustrated, she had no more desire for him to be in jail than he did.
Granted, I thought it would be a disaster, I though she’d get to college and dump him - its one of the things I am most happy to have been complete wrong about.
You know, if it is true love, it can wait. Celibacy is not an impossible position.
(Another friend married at twenty one right when she finished college to a guy 20 years older than she was - he waited until she was legal to ask her out - and married her three years later. And my stepmother in law is 30 years younger than my father in law - and they waited until the wedding.)
Because the result of that would be likely pregnancy by another 14 year old. it’s not that the 22 year old’s actions are good per se. It is the idea that it is the lesser of two evils. Everyone involved wished instead that the girl would be mentally/emotionally sound but she wasn’t. The parents already had her in therapy, and could not afford a girl’s boarding school where she would probably still find a way to get pregnant.
And there’s no need for you to turn what I said about the man likely being a responsible husband and father into “good influence” in order to get an edge to argue. of course “good influence” is a related concept, but since you cannot attack the idea he would likely make a responsible husband and father, you have to change the aspect of what I said. This man resisted her advances for 2 years and that is a fact testified to by all.
Look, I used an anecdote as an illustration. I cannot prove it, but you are supposed to treat it for what it is–an illustration, so take it as theoretical. The situation I describe is NOT some other where “boning a middle school aged child” is appropriate to describe what everyone involved, including the girl’s parent’s called love-making. You should instead take the facts as I gave them to you in a theoretical and attack THAT situation, if you think it should be attacked, rather than changing the situation to one by more negative language that might be appropriate.
Or if you wish comment on a predator type situation, by all means post your owntheoretical situation.
I don’t quite follow your language here, should he instead think he is accepting either a request for sex or “her advances.”
Perhaps you do not understand that I am not trying to argue that a mentally or emotionally problematic teenage girl is capable of rendering consent. I am instead referring to the fact of which party was taking initiative so no-one would get the idea that the young man was initiating this. Common language uses the word “advances” to describe one-sided romantic situations all the time, I don’t see why you can’t.
I would say that with the “Romeo and Juliet” laws, we are saying that neither can meaningfully consent. We chose not to incarcerate a minor male for having sex to which both consented when neither have the capacity.
We do not enforce contracts between minors, as far as I know. I would see the reasoning as analogous.
See, I’ve seldom heard older women get catty about 25 year old hot younger women. Sometimes the tackiness (i.e. visible tramp stamps, the thong thing that was big years ago). But hey, show off that cleavage if you have it. I think this is a myth that guys think women do much more than its done (which isn’t to say its never done, but it isn’t done in my friend circle, nor have I heard any of my coworkers do it).
With younger women - 15, 15 17 - its usually protectiveness via experience - although I’ve taught my own daughter self esteem and a smart mouth rather than to hide her light under a bushel.
That’s all we need. The girl in question is actually least in position to determine if she was groped. She can’t see if people are deliberately grabbing certain parts of her body. That’s the whole reason why people would grope her, because she wouldn’t know the difference.
There is no contrary evidence, say, of the girl coming out and saying she wasn’t really groped, or any other witness saying she wasn’t groped. No one was named, so there’s no one to argue that they weren’t groping her.
The evidence we have is that the lead singer saw it happen and was sure enough to make a big deal about it. Yet your conclusion is that it didn’t happen. That makes no sense.
As for Bricker’s question, the issue is not that minors have no capacity for consent. The restriction is just on consent to have sex with an adult or sufficiently older minor. The idea is that minors can be tricked into consent by someone whose cognitive abilities and life experience are sufficiently more advanced.
To put it more simply, it’s not a lack of capability of consent, but merely a decreased capability. And we legally delineate that decreased capability in with whom the minor is capable of consenting to have sex with
That doesn’t work, though. Two minors can still fall afoul of the Romeo and Juliet laws. If both have absolutely no ability to provide consent, then it makes no sense to prosecute 17-year-old Bob for having sex with 12-year-old Alice.
The way the laws work, Bob can consent with Alice but can’t with 27 year old Cathy. He has limited ability to give consent. It is a crime for either to have sex with someone who can’t consent to have sex with them.
I would say that there can be a power differential between two minors even greater than that between a minor and an adult. We’ve all heard about teenage girls pressured into sex by their minor boyfriends. I think it’s weird that we don’t punish coercive behavior by minors, though I think it’s entirely appropriate that we don’t (generally) hold them strictly liable for sex acts.
I think you’ve forgotten about the 13 and under crowd. Or that the rule tends to break down even before that. (I don’t know anyone who would blink at a 16 year old dating a 14 year old, for example.)