So the pail of water was just a PC way of describing Jills :smack:
There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to any message board. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of pedantry and pompousness. It is an area which we call the Dio Zone.
You misheard - it was “to felch the farmer’s daughter”!
The reason Jack fell down and broke his crown, is because the farmer was lying in wait in nearby bushes. Honest. I read it in a magazine!
Good grief, I’ll say it again for the umptempth time. And probably what a lot of other people here are thinking.
The dude can’t just say “I thought she was 18/21/whatever” and he is off the hook. Nobody is saying that.
He better have some proof that a reasonable person would buy into. All most people want is the chance for the accussed to actually have a shot at showing that in thier case they were as much a victim as the victim.
Hell, we allow every sleaze bag that goes to court to claim not guilty if they want. Doesnt mean they get a free pass and fly the coop.
Ok, I can accept ‘‘manipulative’’ as long as it honors the reality that the child does not have the control or the ability to consent when it comes to sexual activity with adults. Just as the adult ultimately controls whether or not the child gets the toy, the adult also controls whether or not the minor has sex with him. Childhood is about being powerless. Manipulation is a tactic used by people who have no power. If you’re manipulated into doing something you know is wrong, you’re still accountable for your actions.
But we are really talking about extreme examples here – examples where adults do not know that the people they are having sex with are minors. Dio does not think this is possible. I am certain that it is. The idea that a child cannot trick an adult into believing he or she is an adult is absurdly illogical to me. I’m not saying it happens every day, but it definitely happens.
Now he tells me. :smack:
Regards,
Shodan
The same way we allow self-defense to be a viable excuse without letting every killer off the street claim he was defending himself, or allow insanity to be a viable excuse without letting every criminal off the street claim he was insane, or…
Lower the age of consent to 13. That’ll resolve the issue at least most of the time.
I think you misunderstood me. I’m not claiming anyone gets a free pass for claiming ignorance of age. In fact, though I had no part in the first GD thread on this matter, I’m pretty sure the question was why ignorance of age is not a legal defense.
I completely agree that anyone accused of statutory rape ought to have the ability to make an argument that they did everything reasonable to ensure the person they had sex with was capable of consenting. I would be in favor of ignorance of age as a valid legal defense provided the burden of proof is met.
My question is ‘‘What is that reasonable standard of proof? How do you prove that you were deceived?’’
It’s not meant to be a confrontational question. It’s an intellectual one. If that question was already answered in the GD thread I apologize.
Cougars are fine, though.
Fair enough.
Take a regular rape case. How do you decide the guy is guilty or innocent? You often have about as much “real” evidence one way vs the other.
Or do you just wanna throw your hands up and say guilty! because its hard to decide what makes someone innocent or not?
As someone else said, something like this SHOULD be hard and complicated. Its not like getting a parking ticket where you just go “shit happens” and move on.
I agree. As I said upthread I think the real reason Dio is struggling with this is because it’s not easy to resolve. It’s much easier to just assert that ignorance of age is never possible than it is to figure out a way to make it a valid legal defense.
Double fair enough. And shit.
Ironically, there is a sex with a minor themed show running right now on Law and Order SVU.
I like their solution. They run a sting to see whether this guy is preying on the young stuff or just a victim himself. Much less doubt and in practice I would think this would be cheaper than a court trial.
So did they get Olivia to wear a Justin Bieber t-shirt and low cut jeans to try to pass for a 14 year-old?
No, it was Munch in a Strawberry Shortcake dress. They caught the perv.
AFAICT, that’s not actually the standard Dio is proposing for one-night stands; he’s saying “sleep with any stranger you want if you believe they’re of legal age, but be prepared to take the fall if you guessed wrong”. It just so happens that the safest ways to avoid guessing wrong are (a) sleeping only with people who look much more mature than any underage person could possibly look, and (b) sleeping only with people whom you know well enough to be absolutely confident that they’re not underage (no matter how young they may look).
As for the liquor store comparison, yes, certainly a liquor store could be held to the same strict standards of liability for illegally and unknowingly dealing with a minor as a customer as individuals are for illegally and unknowingly dealing with a minor as a sex partner. I’m just pointing out that one reason liquor stores are not held to equally strict standards is that the state has an interest in facilitating legal business transactions, such as liquor sales, that it does not have in facilitating private sexual encounters.
And there’s another important distinction between those situations that I forgot to mention earlier: namely, that while there are few or no liquor store owners who actively WANT to illegally sell liquor to minors, there are plenty of individuals who actively WANT to illegally have sex with underage partners, and who will go to great lengths to accomplish their desires.
Consequently, it does make a certain amount of sense for the law to say "We’re going to punish honest mistakes involving screwing minors much more harshly than we punish honest mistakes involving selling liquor to minors, because otherwise we’ll have too many criminals in the former category trying to exploit the ‘honest mistake’ loophole."
My comment upthread was that objective indicators would be most viable–producing witnesses that saw that the child was talking to the adult in an over-21 or over-18 environment like a club or a bar would be the ideal, or witnesses willing to certify that the minor had a false ID when asked, or producing evidence that said minor owns a false ID coupled with the testimony that it was checked.
That “certain amount of sense” falls apart if (as I do) you value the freedom of the innocent more than the punishment of the guilty and judge criminality primarily by intent rather than outcome.
As are Pussies.