I should say, i know people who had sex that was illegal in their jurisdiction at age 16 who, as adults, are still glad they did it, and have fond memories. Even one guy who thinks it kept him from suicide. (He’s gay, and had sex with a much older man.) A woman who had sex with her 16 year old boyfriend when she was sixteen was still happily married to the man in her 40s.
If you will indulge me a little story… early in my career I sat 2nd chair defending a rape case. The age of consent in my state is 16. The victim in this case was 15 and 51 weeks. She was clearly the initiator in the sexual acts, having lied about a situation to have my client come to her house when no one was home, approached him wearing only underwear, and explicitly stating she wanted to have sex. Both legally and morally, none of that excused his behavior, and he was rightfully convicted and was sentenced to 10 years, and will be a registered sex offender for life.
Here is my question, do you think life in prison would either help the victim more, or be more of a deterrent for possible violators than the 10 year sentence was?
Are some incidents that are convicted as “rape” worse than others and deserve harsher sentences? yes, of course.
You’ve been here long enough to expect that an extreme opinion is likely to be challenged but you are not obliged to defend it. That goes for anyone so don’t go assuming it is personal, the problem is with the idea not the person behind it.
Talking of trying make things personal…
This suggests that somehow my desire for a fair and proportionate legal system is somehow supportive of an alleged “rape culture”. I reject that out of hand.
Being able to judge each case on its merits, take mitigating circumstances into account and punish accordingly is entirely reasonable.
I understand that completely but you’ve avoided answering my question.
Do you think that all convictions of “rape” deserve that maximum punishment?
I say no, what do you say?
It is not my job to set criminal punishments. I would probably answer that question differently on different days. It also depends, quite frankly, on what the rape laws are. If a 16 year old with an 18 year old is legally rape, no, i don’t think it should get the maximum punishment. But if a 40 year old teacher, or minister, or scout leader abused his position to have sex with a 13 year old, yeah, I’m okay locking him away for the rest of his life.
And i oppose the death penalty, so that’s pretty much the max punishment in my book.
Everyone loves to get draconian when it comes to doling out punishments. At a certain age the likelihood recidivism drops to zero for most all crimes so there’s no benefit to society to continue incarceration, only cost.
I’m sure that this point was made upthread, but I’ve always found it absurd that we use the same terminology to describe the situation where two underage teenagers have sex with each other versus an armed stranger breaking into a persons home, holding them at knifepoint and violently penetrating them. We’ve managed to capture some of the nuance in actions that cause the death and injury of another but we can’t seem to do the same for sex crimes. I think this is largely an extension of our historic puritanical issues with sex.
In some cases, we have. The law will often criminalize all abuse, but draw distinctions between touching and penetration, or grooming/solicitation versus active manhandling. Similarly, the Rome & Juliet laws we’ve been discussing do offer mitigation based on age.
It’s obviously an emotional topic, though, and any attempt to introduce leniency is likely to result in negative repercussions (when some lawmakers tried to add same sex couples to these Romeo & Juliet laws, they were accused of trying to legalize molesting*. Easier to just remain draconian).
*compare the headline ( New California bill would lower penalties for adults who have sexual relations with a minor) with the actual bill’s purpose
I wonder if it might not be even more traumatic to be violated by someone you thought you could trust than a stranger, though. And because most men are substantially stronger than most most women, a large fraction of “date rape” involves overwhelming force.
I agree that in a case where a horny kid 2 weeks below the age of consent has intercourse with someone they lust after who is 2 week older than the age of consent, that is a far less damaging situation for the legal victim. But I suspect “date rape” is often worse than popular culture would lead you to believe.
I’m talking about casual language, not legal, though the casual language ideally stems from it. Fixing the language would take some of the emotion out of it.
We have manslaughter, involuntary homicide and murder. While those are still imperfect, it does a pretty effective job of eliminating the overreaction people tend to have when discussing manslaughter crimes. People don’t scream for the chair and they can accept sentences measured in years for tragic events.
But people seem to struggle to differentiate between statutory rape and other “rape” crimes. Intellectually they know the difference, but no can seem to talk rationally about it. We have 19 year olds who had sex with a 16 year old classmate who end up spending their entire life on the sex offender registry along with predatory pedos and violent rapists. That happened because politically it’s suicide to be moderate when it comes to “rape”. We also seem to struggle to differentiate between people who view child porn and those who produce it.
I think you need to back that statement up. I’d wager the vast majority is alcohol/drug related.
The one doesn’t preclude the other.
(Edited to fix swypo.)
I’m assuming you mean “preclude”.
That may or may not be the case, but you’re making a statement of fact based on statistics. I’d like to see something to support it. The reality is that “date rape” isn’t a well defined term. Most people I think would not categorize any sexual assault requiring overwhelming force or the threat of violence as “date rape” even if the offenders knew each other.
Aye, and the realization of that only began moving the needle late in the decade (*).
Getting back to the OP scenarios, that combined with pop culture caricatures of the “teenage groupie” and the “runaway” and of course the good ol’ reliable labeling of “good” and “bad” kids (never mind if they were doing the exact same thing), created a self-reinforcing effect with regards to viewing it as No Big Deal and just part of the hedonistic lifestyle. This had a more nefarious side when it comes to a culture of drug use, since we now accept (well, most of us) that “well, she got wasted” is no excuse, but back then it was often taken as one.
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(* Heck, real honest to goodness kiddypr0n was not explicitly outlawed in US federal law until '77 and at that time only production and sale.)
That’s a fair observation. If we had some terminology to describe an inappropriate, but consensual, teenage/young adult sexual relationship that wasn’t as severe as “rape”, it would expand the possible range of responses. Such is the power of language.
The same for this statement?
Precisely. Ironically we seem to have managed to categorize things like workplace sex involving a superior coercing a subordinate as “sexual harassment” in spite of the fact that some of these cases may actually be more severe than things like statutory rape and intoxicated sex.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by “alcohol/ drug related” - but I do know that in my state a drunk person is capable of consent unless 1) the person is mentally incapacitated and incapable of appraising or controlling their conduct as the result of an intoxicating substance administered to the person without their consent or 2) the person is unconscious or for any other reason is physically unable to communicate unwillingness to an act.
Depends on what you mean exactly by “overwhelming force or threat of violence” - sure, if you mean threatening to strike someone or holding a knife or gun, most people will not consider that acquaintance or date rape. How about when someone says “no, stop, I don’t want to” and the bigger ,stronger person simply continues to do what they want, because the smaller, weaker person can’t physically stop them or get out from under them - lots of people will call that date rape.
Why are you crawling up my ass again? This silliness is what prompts you to make your first comment in this thread? Shitting on my comment with inaccurate pedantry?
I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone objective that “I’d wager” is a patently different statement than an uncategorical “are”.
I’m not completely sure what you’re contending here. My recollection of when the term “date rape” first started making the rounds in the news back in the 80s/90s it was generally considered to describe a situation where a couple people had been previously affectionate, usually on a date or at a party, and then the intimacy escalated past a point when one party wanted to stop. It was generally targeted at college-aged kids who were drunk and handsy. This wasn’t generally framed as an attack per se, the victim usually saying no well after the two were in private and in a state of undress. None of that of course minimizes it, but I think there’s a taxonomic difference between that and someone holding a knife to someone throat and tearing off off their clothes.
Later, especially in these #metoo times, the term “date rape” has morphed to be a lot more inclusive of more mild forms of unwanted contact.