Here’s a hypothetical situation: 16 yr old boy and 18 yr old girl get drunk. They have sex with each other. Who has the upper hand legally? Would the 18 yr old statutorally raping the 16 yr old be worse than the 16 yr old being accused of rape by the 18 yr old? What would happen in that kind of situation?
first thing to do is check the age of consent laws in your state. in quite a few states it is actually 16.
im not a lawyer, but i guess it depends on the attitudes of the police, public, prosecutor and judge rather than a written law.
If they both are drunk, i guess the boy would have the upper hand. If the boy got the girl drunk i would guess the girl has the upper hand.
(1) Presuming this is happening in the USA – isn’t the legal drinking age 21 in all states now? (It was 18 for awhile in some states, including mine when I turned 18). If so, then who’s the adult responsible for getting, or selling them, the alcohol they got drunk on?
(2) Realistically, while the 18 year old girl in your scenario is “technically” a legal adult (except she can’t legally buy booze), how many 16 year old guys are going to accuse 18 year old girls who let them have sex with them of rape? And if they’re in a state where 16 is below the age of consent, do you think the 18 year old girl is going to go to the cops and say she raped this guy? This presumes both parties were sexually willing.
(3) If the boy forced the girl to have sex against her will (and surely there are 16 year old boys big and strong enough to do it), she has every right to accuse him of forcible rape and press charges against him for that.
Oh well, that all probably makes too much sense, so I’m probably wrong. Never mind. 
:rolleyes:
if, for the sake of argument, we are ina state where it is a the 16 yr old is under the age of consent, i would have to say that statutory rape would have to be determined after the forcible rape case is decided. if the 18 yr. old girl was forcibly raped, then she didn’t commit statutory rape because it was against her will. of course, this is only logic i’m going on, which doesn’t always make it into the judicial system.
sorry, that should read:
if, for the sake of argument, we are in a state where the 16 yr old is under the age of consent…
it’s late, and i’m tired (see sleep abnormality post).
A friend of mine (here in California) briefly dated a 20 year old woman when he was 17. We wondered about this, and asked some people (the health teacher at school) who said that, yes, he could press charges if he wanted to.
I don’t think the sex was that bad though.
It depends on the law (some only call it statutory rape if there is a set age difference – say 10 years – between the participants) and how the prosecutor wants to handle it. An 18-year-old having sex with a 16-year-old is most likely not something he’s going to waste time prosecuting, though, of course, he could.
In Texas, it’s a defense to a statutory rape charge if the accused is within three years of the minors age.
In my senior year of high school, a friend of mine, 17 at the time, was dating and routinely having sex with a (30-32?) year old woman. The funny thing is, she was married with 2 kids but separated at the time. Whats even funnier is that her husband is a high school science teacher, just not at the same school.
But yeah, 17 and (30-32) thats pretty extreme and I bet he would be the “rape” victim.
If the 18 yr. old female claimed the 16 yr. old forced her, then it would take some pretty extraordinary circumstances for a statutory charge against her to proceed.
IIRC, under the earliest rape laws, the victim of statutory rape had to be female; are there any states that haven’t regularized this to include boys?
From what I remember of the Pennsylvania laws, sex with an impaired (e.g., drunk) person could be prosecuted as rape, so both of the teenagers in your hypothetical could be charged, even independent of their ages.
Alright, sorry about not replying. The state is New Jersey. Let’s say both got drunk independantly (at their own homes), were both driven to a house, and wandered into a bedroom at the same time. They’re drunk so they’re like,“Let’s have sex!” There was no forcing of sex.
I was thinking that if the girl sobered up and regretted what she did, she may try to accuse him of rape. Tehn the guy could countersue with staturtory rape.
Hmm…and let’s also say they both happened to find a bottle of vodka lying on the street, a bottle impossible of being traced back to its original owner.
In New Jersey the legal age of consent is 16. So the boy wouldn’t have a case for statutory rape. Although the age of consent is also 16 in Alabama, it comes with a qualifier: If the older partner is not at least three years older than the younger, there’s no statutory rape. For example, a 17 year old cannot be charged with statutory rape for having sex with a willing 15 year old partner. Other states may or may not have this Three Year Rule.