Offering several possible consequents, at least one of which must be true if the premise is true, is a standard method of pointing out the problems that may arise from a given premise.
It means that I realized the need to close off your usual escape hatch (willful ignorance of the logical implications of your position). Without the explicit statement, I assumed that you would attempt to deny that disallowing a deception defense means that the situation in the OP would in fact be treated exactly the same as a case of deliberate and intentional statutory rape.
I’m so glad you could identify the flaw in your question. Yes, I deny that disallowing a “Deception defense” means that every person will be treated the same. I deny it because it’s factually wrong (most, if not all, states have degrees of sexual assault) and unrealistic (it ignores that the criminal justice system deals with cases on a case by case basis. Every case is, in fact, not the same, and the fact that you needed to include the parentheisis should have been a good indication that your “questions” were… not good ones.
Then you’re simply being obtuse. Obviously, if the defense is disallowed from introducing a deception defense, then cases with deception and cases without deception will be treated identically, as the court will have no way of distinguishing between them.
The flaw in that premise is that allowing people the defense of having gone through the steps that any reasonable person would in order to ascertain the age of their partner *does not in any way *fail to protect other children.
If a 14 year old breaks into a restaurant in the middle of the night and stabs himself with a knife, is the restaurant liable just because he’s a minor?
But what if they *are *certain, but wrong? Exactly *how *do you think someone can be sure that their partner is also over the age of consent?
Let’s skip forward to 2019. Your oldest daughter is 21. She goes out for a drink with someone she’s known since high school. She asks him to watch her beer while she goes to the bathroom. While she’s away, he slips a drug into her drink, takes her back to his apartment, and rapes her while she’s unconscious.
Would you say the rape was her fault? Obviously, she couldn’t have known him that well. Was she a moron?
That’s your personal opinion. Which, as has been noted, appears to be composed of several contradictory parts, which you still refuse to resolve. Moreover, the legal system of this country is *specifically structured *so as to err on the side of letting the guilty free to avoid punishing the innocent. Intent is also factored in heavily on the vast majority of crimes.
Punishing someone in the situation described in the OP the same as we punish a deliberate and knowing statutory rapist is unfair.
A defendant in the fact situation described in the OP should not be permitted to introduce that fact situation into evidence as a defense.
It reminds me of the time I got the “clever” idea of putting one of those light-sensing bulb sockets into a frosted-glass-enclosed porch light. I managed to turn it off before the on-again-off-again cycling burned something out.
It seems to me that “there should not be an explicitly stated affirmative defense enshrined in law; it should remain strict liability” doesn’t QUITE mean “affirmative defenses offered as mitigation should be entirely disallowed in strict liability cases”, is what I think Hamlet’s trying to get at.
I think it’s fair to say at this point that you have no clue what you are talking about. You seem to be working under some serious misunderstandings of how the criminal justice system functions here in reality. You seem to think that if something is not an affirmative defense, then it can’t be used whatsoever, anywhere, in any way shape or form, in the entire system. That’s simply not true. Not allowing the “deception defense” to be an affirmative defense does not mean it shouldn’t be considered whatsoever.
She was irresponsible for trusting that guy with her drink. She was a moron yes. That doesn’t mean he’s not criminally liable for every single thing he did. I’ve already told my daughter that she should never let a drink out of her sight in a public place, or drink from an open container again once it has been.
This has fuck all to do with this thread, though. How is a girl getting drugged in a bar analogous to some poor, imaginary 40 year old man getting entrapped into boning some lying, made up, fake ID having evil 9 year old whore?
There was another case in the news a few years ago in which a guy in his 20s succesfully posed as a 6th grader (or something like that) but I’m not inclined to look for it just now.
Because you seem to think that the answer to all of society’s ills is for people to be insanely paranoid about everyone else, to the extent that if someone takes advantage of your trust, the fault lies with the person who trusted, and not the liar.
I guess what I’m looking for is intent. You seem to be saying that if a guy sleeps with a girl that is underage, that he’s just wanting to have sex with young girls, even if he think she’s older. That’s why the masturbation question.
And as for her being fucked, she was under 18, her partners were older. I think that’d be statutory rape. Again, are they pedo’s?
Someone who has sex, even knowingly, with an underage girl, is not necessarily a pedophile. At all. Not technically, not generally, nothing. It’s a sexual attraction to prepubescents that makes you a pedophile.
If it was legal for me to sleep with 17 year olds I’d be dating 17 year olds. But that three year difference can give me five, so I don’t.
But, they slept with someone underage without knowing that she was, due to false documentation. Yes, I know it’s acting, it’s not the same as actual sex. And I know they’re not there due to attraction, it’s their job.
I don’t know if this has been discussed yet, I couldn’t quite get up the stamina to trudge through 8 pages of this thread, but good faith belief is a defense to statutory rape in California, at least. It just makes sense, as it is entirely unreasonble for someone to be convicted of a crime for which they may be required to register as a sex offender, for an honest mistake. It’s an affirmative defense:
In statutory rape case, if defense of lack of criminal intent is raised, people must prove that defendant did not have reasonable cause to believe that victim was over 18 years of age. People v. Winters (1966, Cal App 5th Dist) 242 Cal App 2d 711, 51 Cal Rptr 735, 1966 Cal App LEXIS 1174.
Cal Pen Code § 261.5
If only the rest of the country would develop some common sense.
Perhaps for its next trick, Arizona can razor-wire the California border, lest the hordes of pedo-perverts who no doubt roam that unhappy land should spill over into their territory…
I had a 28 year old girlfriend for about 4 months when I was 16. Must have been raped at least 50 times during that period. Hadn’t realized until now what a traumatic experience that must have been for me. Thinking back I remember how sad I was when she broke it off due to the age difference (I even cried), I guess that was really just relief after being systematically raped for several months.
