Actaully, my gateway law suggestion aside, does anyone see a serious problem with statutory rape after age 20? Cases where age is known(relatively), not assumed.
I’ve always been of the opinion that after age 20 you shouldn’t have trouble finding ‘adults’ to date. You may still find that special someone who is underage, but I would hope you were responsible enough under the circumstances to wait. Plus I think the experience gap gets large enough at that point that you can back off. My .02 anyway.
Roman Polanski was and is a French citizen; he more returned to France than he is in “exile” from the U.S. He lived in the U.S. only when he was working there.
A podium is a stage, a lectern is a speaker’s desk. You stand on a podium, behind a lectern.
Elia Kazan testified, under subpoena, before the House committee in 1952. Only three years later, the members of the Motion Picture Academy awarded Kazan the Oscar for Best Director (for East of Eden). These were the people who knew and worked with Kazan, and who knew the Hollywood Communists he named.
Indeed I am, she’s also an exception and not the rule. The only reason that the case came to light and was prosecuted was because her husband found out and reported her to the police.
Isn’t it often true that statutory rape cases are not applied if the age difference between the two parties is two years or less? I thought I’d heard that before on these boards (several times, actually). I am too lazy to find a cite.
Personally, I can’t imagine trying to get some 18-year-old on statutory rape because he or she had sex with a 17 3/4 year old. That seems a little silly.
But if the person is in their 40s and the child is 13? That’s an entirely different kettle of fish. Even if the kid is a “Lolita” type, it’s up to the 40 year old to have enough sense to back off.
And indeed, I cannot be too sympathetic of Mary K. Letourno. When she was caught the first time and put in jail I think I felt some ambivalence about the case—but when she got out with the understanding that she wouldn’t see her teenaged lover again, and the first thing she does is steam up the insides of a car with him? Well, really! The woman lacked any sense. She was unhinged.
There’s also always the possibility of offspring (as in the Mary K. case) and I doubt that many 13 year olds really have a grasp as to what parenthood means. Sure, some probably do, but not that many. But thanks to Mary K., this young man was a father at age 12 (or 14?). He’s a really young father. And it all could have been avoided had Mary K. just used some common sense. In this particular case, the boy’s mother ended up caring for the children for at least a while (I don’t know if she’s still raising the kids).
Sometimes, the parents of the minor children (who are “victims” of statutory rape) end up helping to raise or support the offspring that result from this rape. I am sure they love their grandchildren, but it takes a lot of responsibility and energy to raise a baby. I’m sure they feel it is a terribly unfair situation that they have foisted upon them, and who can blame them?
Any adult who has sex with a 13 year old is sick. Polanski has evaded justice for his crimes for 26 years and should not be honored in any way because of it. How hypocritical that the Hollywood elite applauded the awarding of an Oscar to a pedophilic fugitive, yet booed Michael Moore for speaking his mind about a war.
Agree with the point about the victim’s forgiveness. This is irrelevant in the eyes of the law. If Polanski showed the slightest bit of remorse or was prepared to pay for his crimes then perhaps he could be forgiven, however, he has not.
The argument about all the wonderful films he has made does not hold water either. If he had been prosecuted, convicted and sent to prison he would never have been able to make them. However, it is possible that another director would have picked up the scripts and made them. The same goes for the example of the doctor - just because one doctor has been removed from society foes not mean that people’s lives will not be saved by others.
Comparing Elia Kazan to Roman Polanski, as far as I’m concerned, is really apples and oranges. It seems ridiculous to me, however, that people in the Academy were willing to say “Look at the work, not the man,” for Roman Polanski, not for Elia Kazan. Roman Polanski wasn’t at risk of losing his career if he slept with the thirteen year-old. Roman Polanski hadn’t left the ranks of thirteen year-olds over serious ideological differences. Roman Polanski was not being pressured by the U.S. government to sleep with the thirteen year-old. I’m not saying he shouldn’t be forgiven for his mistakes; I’m saying that you can’t forgive one and not forgive the other.
In my initial post, I was trying to be more diplomatic about the whole “statutory rape” thing, but I feel I need to make my opinion more clear. Whether or not the girl was willing, she was thirteen. It seems to me unlikely that she knew what exactly she was getting into. Also, her parents’ behavior (whether or not they put her in that situation deliberately) isn’t her fault. If her parents are willing to risk their daughter’s well-being, they’re unfit parents. It doesn’t mean she was asking for it. Also, it’s possible that they accepted the plea to try and prevent her becoming famous as “that girl Roman Polanski slept with.” Though this wasn’t all that long ago in the grand scheme of things, the mentality was still more “blame the victim” than it is now (at least, a little). A grown man shouldn’t be having sex with a thirteen year-old, not if he’s twenty, not if he’s forty. Especially when there are plenty of women his age out there “gagging for it.”
So whenever a 40 yr. old man drugs and rapes a minor, we should suspend the investigation until the girl is an adult and then ask her how she feels about it? And let him run free to do it again in the meantime?
This type of hypocrisy gives me a migraine. Hollywood says to Polanksi, “Your a rapist? Well, boys will be boys. But Kazan wrecked the careers of some of us Hollywood people. That’s horrible!”
You can’t be serious that Hollywood’s attitude toward rape is “Boys will be boys.” I challenge you to find even one Academy member who said anything like that. The fact is, you don’t know what went on in the heads of the hundreds of Academy members (male and female) who voted for Polanski, and you shouldn’t put inflammatory words like that in their mouths.
Yeah, he must be really really remorseful for what he did. Probably keeps him up all night in his million dollar mansion, while he sips his wine and wonders just how many more people will come to his defense.
If he was remorseful, he’d face up to what he’s done, and accept punishment for it. He hasn’t, and he won’t.
The rest of my opinion of this child-raper isn’t fit for G.D.
A law that says sex with a minor is only a crime if the minor is “immature” is so increadibly vague and arbitrary that there isn’t a single court in this country that would uphold it. Making the law clear is not designed to save man hours, it is that way so you can actually KNOW what the crimes are. Criminal law, for the same reason, is all based on statute, not common law. Of course the prosecution has discretion whether or not to pursue a case, but that is a different beast alltogether than saying that the law should itself be phrased in subjective terms. I am sure you can see the problems with subjective criminal law.
One can be remorseful without being willing to serve 20 years in prison, which is a punishment that is disproportionate to the crime. And even if it wasn’t, the definition of remorseful is not and never has been “willing to accept punishment” - if it were, we could describe Tim McVeigh as remorseful.
Drugging and anally raping a thirteen-year-old is not a serious enough crime for twenty years, Stoid?
And your definition of “remorseful” seems to be “I’m really, really sorry as long as nothing happens to me.” By that definition, every criminal on earth is remorseful.
I thought we had come further than this, where rape wasn’t the victim’s fault and children should not be sexualized. Or doesn’t the law apply to the rich and famous? I thought we were beyond that as well.
Yeah, his remorse really came through in his Diane Sawyer interview where he described his rape of the child as: “It was something that just happened.” Now there’s a model of remorse if I’ve ever seen one.
Everything else I would say, other than a slew of invectives, has been said by Shodan and others in this thread.
“Immature” is a vague term, yes. But statutory rape laws are based on specific claims: that people younger than a certain age tend to be incapable of making informed decisions about sex, due to a lack of understanding of the risks and consequences of sex, a lack of experience with emotions and interpersonal relationships, etc.
If those claims can be made of an entire category of people, surely they can be tested on an individual basis - in that case, why make assumptions about an individual based on his membership in a group (age) when you could test him individually? You wouldn’t give someone a driver’s license just because he’s a member of a group that tends to be good at driving; you test the individual to find out if he can drive a car.
On the other hand, if the claims are untestable, they’re useless as a basis for restricting personal liberties.