Yes but this is a legal minor we’re talking about, not a woman or feminist. Kids of that age may be more “savvy” in terms of the mechanics of sexual acts but this kind of “savvy” is not the same as emotionally mature or ready for a sexual relationship. Nor any of the potential consequences.
Kids of that age are easily manipulated regardless of how well-acquainted they are with the mechanics of sexual acts. They are also bundles of hormones who want nothing more than to be accepted as adults, usually. All very normal & understandable and very good reasons to protect them from themselves and anyone who tries to use them.
She’s 14, she had a relationship that she hid from her mother, very typical 14 y.o. behaviour. If she was anywhere near emotionally ready for it, why all the sneaking & hiding & drama?
None legally because she is a legal minor. Legal adults are expected to take responsibility for their actions, and parents are required to answer for the actions of their minor children.
Eeeh. Personally, I think 14 is more than old enough to fuck. ( From what we know), she chose to do it, she chose to persue the relationship, she’s got to live with any consequences.
If it were me, however, I’d draw the 21 year old gently aside and beat the fuck out of him with a baseball bat. Even though it was her choice, he should have known better. No need to get the police or authorities involved, he’ll heal and hopefully learn his lesson with none of the lasting consiquences a rape charge would bring.
…While the members of the sdmb offenderati jury comdemn without first thinking about normal teenage life, as well as that of a 21 year old, not that far removed from the teenage life…
when you talk of taking responsibility, why not take some responsibility to think about the situation, and the fact that you dont know everything surrounding this particular OP. Not only that, but you comdemn while conveniently forgetting what it was like when you were the age of either party.
FWIW, my State holds the older party responsible, regardless of gender. If you are not married to the complaintant, the complaintant is under the age of 16, and a 4 year or greater difference in ages exists, a second degree felony has been committed.
[QUOTE=CuriousCanuck]
…as well as that of a 21 year old, not that far removed from the teenage life…
[QUOTE]
Of course that being said, I do agree in part that this 21 year old if he knew her age beforehand should probably have thought a lot more about what he was doing. But this is not a matter for police if she was willing, and it certainly doesnt mean he needs to get beaten in the streets.
First off, when I was a teenager, I had a couple of rather promiscous friends. They both started having sex at about 14. These girls were most certainly not being preyed upon. They were very willing participants. If one of their aunts or uncles went against their parents wishes and my friends’ wishes and reported them, it would’ve been a great injustice. Those boys would’ve been charged with a felony (they were all over 18) because they had the misfortune of having my friends pursuing them. Now, neither of my friends looked anywhere close to 14, and were prone to lying about their age. So these boys, who at 19 or 20 were walking bags of hormones, were supposed to have their lives ruined because a young girl who lied about her age and looked much older than she said threw herself at him?
I’m not saying this was the case here, I’m just giving another example of when the knee jerk “this guy is a predator and needs to be locked up!” reaction may be a bit overboard.
We don’t know the whole story here. All we know is that this 14 year old girl snuck out of her house to meet this boy and had sex with him. All we can infer from that is that she was most certainly a willing participant. The boys parents understandably don’t want their sons life ruined because he couldn’t keep his thing in his pants when a girl threw herself at him. The girls parents don’t even want this reported. So who are we really helping here? We don’t know if the guy even really knew the girl was only 14. She could’ve lied about her age, a lot of girls do. He could have never bothered asking. We don’t know. Why don’t we calm down and try to get more details before we start lighting the torches and gathering the pitchforks?
Now, Craneop2, this is not meant to be a slam on your niece at all. She could very well have been taken advantage of. And because she’s your niece, you’re understandably enraged and certain that she was wearing pigtails and a babydoll dress and told the boy straightaway she was only 14. That very well may not have been the case at all. All I’m saying here is that many posters are advocating very drastic measures without knowing the whole story, or even most of the story.
You are all more than willing to run out and ruin this guys life, against the wishes of the alleged victim and her parents without even knowing all the details.
Did you actually read anything I posted Curious Canuck? Your own knee-jerking appears to have blinded you.
I suggest you re-read what I’ve posted, what you’ve posted yourself and then look up the term “hypocrite”.
What I’m saying is that no 14 y.o. is capable of dealing with pregnancy, STDs or whatever other consequences could come of a sexual relationship. I remember well what it was like to be a teenager and that’s partly why I know this without question. Their parents are the ones who will have to help them bear the burdens associated with any and all potential negative consequences. As they are required to do by law. Sure they can fuck but they can’t drive, get a job, make a home or reasonably be expected to deal with STDs or raise babies on their own. Pretty simple common sense, really.
Furthermore, there could be legal repercussions for this girl’s mother if it ever gets out that she did nothing about this situation. Might be a stretch, but it’s possible. Like you said, we don’t know the whole story. That’s why I asked the OP why he couldn’t look into getting legal advice on how or whether to proceed. It’s right there in my first post to this thread.
Some answers to questions.
The girls father passed away when she was very young and she has no memories of him at all. Her stepfather had raised three sons in a previous marriage and took her as his own daughter! My wife and I raised 3 daughters and I don’t feel that he is overly strict. There are rules of course but none I wouldn’t have imposed on my own daughters. The stepfather is absolutey crushed that she would do this!
If they would have realized she was EVEN TALKING to a twenty one year old it would have been nipped in the bud. The girl knew this therefore all the sneaking around.
She swears that they used condoms every time. However in the note she wrote, she told her friend that she was probably pregnant. She also stated that if she was that she would cause an abortion by starving the baby to death. So much for making adult decisions!
We live in a small town and I reckon my sis believes that it might be better to not stir up a big stink in the town. They DID warn the prick AND his father to break it off and stay the hell away!
There might be some kind of statute that I HAVE to report this incident. Right now I feeel as though I need to abide by my sisters wishes. It may be correct (as someone mentioned earlier) that there may be more to the story than I know.
I don’t know if sis has taken her to a doctor for verification or tests but I believe it happened because they both admitted it.
Thanks for all the answers and I will keep ya posted…
I’m not going to comment on the wisdom of having sex at fourteen or if she is old enough to make the decision. I certainly know enough women who lost their virginity at or near that age not to start throwing stones.
However, if she is pregnant, supporting the baby will be another matter entirely. IIRC, in order to receive state assistance (which a girl who hasn’t finished high school might find herself needing in her attempts to raise a child) she will need to name the father so the state can make sure he pays child support before they start writing welfare checks. When she does name him, the state may or may not decide to press charges, given that in some states, sex with a fourteen year old is considered pedophilia and he may (or may not) be viewed as a sexual preditor.
If the baby is to be put up for adoption, she will also need to name the father, and the state may at that time decide to press charges.
If your sister wants to keep it hush hush, she may have to take responsibility for the baby and not have the father named. That is harder to do in this day and age than when my grandmother’s cousin was raised as her “sister.”
(I feel for you. I know someone who had nearly identical circumstances, but her Catholic mother suddenly discovered she was a little more pro-Choice than she had marched for when it came to her fourteen year old daughter.)
Btw, add just one year to the girl’s age, and you have my parents. My mother did get pregnant, her family threw all her stuff out onto the curb, and they were on their own. They married, survived, eventually had a larger family, but the marriage did break up after 22 years. My mother’s family reconciled with her, but never w/ my dad. It was very emotionally hard on my mother, and although she’s well off and happy now, you can still see the emotional scars.
This is a very complicated question: I knew a guy who went to jail for knocking up his 15 year old girlfriend. He was living in her father’s house with her with the father’s knowledge, but Social Services told him to move out and desist, which he did not. He got her pregnant, so he got arrested. I believe their relationship was consensual, as much as that girl could give consent-- she was pretty deranged.
The youngest a teen could be to legally have sex with a 21 year old is 16. Still too young IMO, considering how ill-equipped most 16 year old would be to deal with pregnancy or STD’s, but you gotta let them make their own mistakes at some point. If the guy were 19, he’d legally be able to have sex with a 14 year old in several states.
Let me put it another way: as a teacher, I am a mandated reporter. If the OP’s niece were one of my students and I found out she’d had sex with a 21 year old, I’d be required by law to report it to the authorities. It wouldn’t matter one whit what the parents wanted–I am legally obligated to report such things or risk losing my job and being subject to legal penalties. If you wonder why that is, or think what happened to the OP’s niece is A-OK if it was “consensual,” then you probably don’t know too many 14 year old girls. I say this not as an “offenderatti,” but as someone who has dealt extensively with kids this age AND has a binding legal obligation to deal with such things.
Yes, thank God the human race has centuries of tradtion where 14 year olds are never married, have kids, etc… Why, the whole idea is absurd! :rolleyes:
Your point would be valid if we were talking about a 14 y.o in centuries past. We’re not though, are we. :rolleyes:
If you’re trying to say that it should be okay in today’s world for 14 year olds to get married and have babies, then you’re stretching it pretty thin and I think you know it.
In past times, they were married young, had as many kids as possible and died young. They grew up faster because they were required to. If they got pregnant, they got married and worked on the farm or whatever. It was the norm. It was socially acceptable and almost inevitable. That was reality THEN. What legal consequences would their parents be facing? They sure as hell didn’t have to worry about social workers getting in their faces. Aids was non-existent. You don’t hear about a lot of women having abortions back then, either, do you. There was no stigma involved unless the girl was unwed and having babies young was the natural course of life. A 30 year old unwed woman was a fucking spinster, fer chrissakes.
Anyway, this kid lives in TODAY’s world. The idea today is to let the kids stay kids as long as possible, stay in school and have a bit of a fucking life, have some choices before they get tied down with kids. They’re not expected to get married and start having babies in their teens anymore. Yes they do still get pregnant and there are millions of young single moms. But it’s not exactly considered a triumphant life choice by society in general, is it. Sometimes it works out okay but lots of times, it’s the shits for everyone involved. Things are a lot different and society is a lot different. Yes some things are the same, physical sexual maturity still takes place at around the same point in our development. But emotionally, legally, the reality of NOW is a whole different ballgame.
It would be nice to think that what “should be” actually is. Yes. Parents should teach their girls about their sexuality, and how to be sexually responsible and make the right choices in respect to their bodies.
Yes. Girls should have some inkling that not all boys/men care about them as people, and some are actually interested in nothing more than using those girls for sex.
Unfortunately, “should” is not always reality. The fact is, girls (especially adolescent/pubescent girls) frequently do not use best judgement in regard to their bodies, their sexuality, and their emotions. They frequently equate sex with love, and tend NOT to listen to their parents, as their parents have never been there and don’t have any clue what she’s going through. :rolleyes: . I’m sure this comes as a great shock, but it IS reality.
I see a lot of posts from young men here who talk about their first hand experience with older girls/women. I don’t see any posts from any of you relating to any first hand experience with younger (5 or six years) girls…say 15 or sixteen.
Like it or not, a 14 y.o. girl is not an adult. Possibly she may be physically mature. But emotionally and intellectually, she is still a child.
I’m amazed that so many posters state opinions as facts.
But it all boils down to morality. Holland, where the age of consent is the lowest in the world (12), also has the lowest rate of teen pregnancy and abortions. They also have extensive sex-ed putting emphasism on safe sex, rather than saying “no”. The result?
A country’s laws reflects its mores. If the AoC in the US generally is 18, then that’s a result of what society deems appropriate. The guy in the OP might be a scumbag, the girl a victim, and since your society condemns that behaviour, then it was clearly wrong, for that time and place. But there is no scientific basis for that assumption and I refuse to believe that an American teenage girl is less able to handle pregnancy and taking care of a baby, than a girl of the same age in most European countries.
Interstingly, the same text i linked to above has this to say:
Latin America is a bit vague, I admit.
This is another source with very interesting reading - link. Warning - large pdf. If you don’t want to open it, I can say that the US has about 50 pregnancies per 1000 teenagers, whereas sex crazed countries like Holland (5,6) and Sweden (7,7) is down to almost ten percent of that rate. AoC in Sweden is 15, btw.
Hm. Do you think, Gaspode, that these figures may have something to do with the fact that the United States government refuses to allow any money in public schools be spent on sexual education and pregnancy prevention beyond abstinence?
Who said she was emotionally ready for it? Kids make lots of stupid decisions about things they aren’t ready for, that doesn’t mean they are completely absolved of any responsibility for those choices.
If we, as a society, can hold a 14 year old boy responsible as an adult for making the choice to kill someone, and we have, we can hold a 14 year old girl responsible for making the choice to have sex.
I’d trust the Mom on this one. She’s a she and she knows as much as just about anyone can re the situaton. Maybe something’ll come to light that’ll change her mind. If it does, trust her judgement then too.
Going to court can be more distressing than having sex. The well being of niece is the primary focus.
One of the differences is the fact that unlike most European countries, America is not embued with a plethora of socialistic government womb-to-tomb entitlement programs. A girl who gives birth to a child in her teens and chooses to raise that child has an exponentially higher chance:
of being poor and dependent upon the false promise of welfare
of remaining poorly educated
of remaining unmarried over her lifetime, tying into poverty
That doesn’t address the problems which the child is likely to face, including:
50% higher infant mortality rate
low birth weight and correlating childhood health problems, due to inadequate prenatal care and nutrition
poor early childhood development
higher likelyhood of growing up poor, abused or neglected than peers with older mothers
higher likelyhood of receiving inadequate nutrition, medical care, cognitive and social stimulation
higher likelyhood of failing to graduate from high school
three times the likelyhood of being incarcerated during adolescence or early 20s
higher likelyhood of becoming teen parents themselves perpetuating the cycle further.
These quality of life problems inherent in teen motherhood are one of the reasons why statutory rape remains a crime and why enforcement of it is so important. Fathers of children born to teens mothers tend to be four years older than the mothers, on average, and a majority are over the age of 21. A full 1/4 of these situations are prosecutable as sex offenses, but a majority of such situations are not because people decide that it wouldn’t be right to “ruin” the father’s life – even though the act for which he is criminally culpable has a huge chance of significantly impairing the lives of the young woman involved and her child.
Why is all of this pregnancy talk relevant? Because a teenaged girl with a sex partner who is six years or more older than she is 3 times as likely to become pregnant than a teenaged girl whose partner’s age is morely closely alined with her own.
All of this information, btw, can be found at the Planned Parenthood site, lest anyone think that it’s scaremongering from some anti-sex, pro-abstinence right-wing think tank.
Thing is, I have to wonder if this guy will learn his lesson and refrain from taking up with another teenager. Clearly he has no compunction about doing a young girl, even when he’s well aware that what he’s doing is questionable enough that it can only be accomplished on the sly, hidden from the knowledge of anyone in authority.
Hopefully, Craneop2’s niece isn’t pregnant and her life isn’t going to be permanently scarred by her relationship with this twerp. But without some interference from law enforcement, the next girl may not be so lucky. For that reason alone, this guy should be handed over to the authorities who have far more expertise in dealing with these sorts of situations and these types of “men.”
Ok I’m going to go out on a limb here and tell you something. That little girl was NOT mature enough to concent to ANYTHING that fucker did to her. SHE WAS MOLESTED. Let me say that again for those of you that didn’t understand… SHE WAS MOLESTED
There is no way in HELL that a 14 year old CHILD was mature enough to make the decision to have sex. It is your DUTY AS A CONCERNED ADULT to get her to tell SOMEONE who the hell he was, where he lives, when this happened ETC… YOU REALLY need to get that child to a doctor and have her checked for EVERYTHING. To HELL with what her mother says. In this state SHE can be arrested as an accessory after the fact because she didn’t tell anyone AND her lovely daughter can be removed from the home and placed in foster care.
A young lady in my apartment complex was molested like this and ended up catching AIDS from the bastard. She died 3 weeks ago at the age of 16 from this disease. She caught it when she was 10
