Don't have sex with children....
and you won't be arrested. If there is a question mark about age, even a hint, put your mickey away.
I am one of those people who is not one hundred per cent happy about this. I'm not outraged, but I am concerned that it leaves loop holes for paedophiles and for sexual abuse.
'Why did you sleep with that girl?'
'She told me she was sixteen.'
'Okay then. You are absolved from any responsibility.'
'Thanks.'
Hum, the little Goth kid could easily pass for seventeen, but she's fourteen. She might look older but a twenty minute conversation with her will show her youth. If you're close enough to be having sex surely you are close enough to be sure of age. Hummm. I don't know, I'm not happy about this ruling. I agree all cases should be viewed case by case, but still, sex with minors should carry serious weight. Humm. I don't know, but I am troubled.
I am one of those people who is not one hundred per cent happy about this. I'm not outraged, but I am concerned that it leaves loop holes for paedophiles and for sexual abuse.
'Why did you sleep with that girl?'
'She told me she was sixteen.'
'Okay then. You are absolved from any responsibility.'
'Thanks.'
Hum, the little Goth kid could easily pass for seventeen, but she's fourteen. She might look older but a twenty minute conversation with her will show her youth. If you're close enough to be having sex surely you are close enough to be sure of age. Hummm. I don't know, I'm not happy about this ruling. I agree all cases should be viewed case by case, but still, sex with minors should carry serious weight. Humm. I don't know, but I am troubled.
posted by fatmammycat at 9:40 a.m.
14 Comments:
In principle, FMC, I agree 100% with ou... but a closer look at this case says that the girl was 15 and claimed to be 16, definitely difficult to judge. Now if the man had been in his twenties then yes, he should have made more of an effort to verify. But when he had sex with the girl he was only 17 himself.
However, to generalise by saying that a law to protect young girls is unconstitutional is taking the argument a bit fucking far and throws the doors wide open to abuse.
That why I said I thought it should be treated case by case. Two teenagers messing about should hardly be walloped as criminals, but what of an eighteen year old with a fourteen yeas old, not much by way of difference in years, but different nonetheless. I don't know Binty, but I get a bad feeling about this one.
if a 14yo girl lies about her age, i think _she_ should be held accountable, not the man who believes her. if he's in doubt, how's he expected to "verify"? if whatever's used as a verifier is also false, is the girl _now_ accountable?
could get complicated.
how about simple: don't lie about your age unless you're prepared for the consequences.
fire away, FMC. :)
I'm with Binty on this one, and with FMC that it should be on a case by case basis. Many 12 year olds to-day could pass for 20 (and sometime do to get into pubs) - its very easy to get fake ID - and I can't see consensual sex between teenagers ever being considered statuatory rape, and treating it thus just muddies the waters of the genuinely horrible paedophile cases which should carry the heaviest imaginable sentence.
You'll none of you get any argument from me.
When I was 13, I had some friends who were fairly...scarily... sexually advanced. The whole idea scared the shit out of me until my 20's (and I still sometimes don't know what the fuss is about) but those girls would have lied their arses off to 'get some,' and though mostly their partners were also in their teens, I could see some poor horny older bastards believing these girls were much older.
The racks on some of them!
All joking aside, though...if a girl lies about her age, I agree with Finn, she should be held accountable. And maybe made to watch some documentaries on teen pregnancy, STD's, and prostitution in the Philippines or something...
Evening all.
Finn, if he's in doubt, I believe it is his moral duty to not proceed with sex.
14 years old girls -I find- lie as a matter of course about just about everything. They lie to seem cool/older/smarter/richer/more worldly than their peers. But that doesn't mean they should be abused because of it. Teenage girls, even the 'Lolita' types are still in my view kids and deserve to be treated as such, that is why there is a an age of consent- the court believeing the person is old enough to consent to something. Again let me be very clear on something, I don't believe two teenagers messing about means an instant law case, that's what I meant by case by case. But there are a lot of older men who quite simply don't give a fiddlers fuck how old a girl is once she looks the part, and when you take away the burden of proof-and law- from them, it is very easy to muddy the future legal waters.
'She looked older.' will, I feel, become the standard reply, even if the guy had doubts, because it is now offered to him.
our age of consent is 16, not 15. and my co-worker from iowa swears it's 18 there, where everything grows slower i guess.
send your little Goth kid across the pond and we'll keep her untrammelled for a bit longer if you'd like.
Oh Finn, I know it's daft, but she's very sweet and for all her wanting to be older, she is frightfully naive-much more than lots of kids her age- and I do worry for her terribly. Everything seems so much less...I don't know, innocent, than it was when I was a kid. I'm sure I'm gawking through rosy glasses a bit, but really, I'm looking at things she's seeing and I'm like, WTF? Playboy thongs and boobtubes, pierced tongues and tattoos and pro- Ana pro-Mia sites and cliques and...eep, the list is endless. And the peer pressure is endless. Christ, I'll shut up now, I'm starting to sound like Gamma Cat, and Dog the Bounty Hunter is on and I need to go see the Dog kick some ass. Go Dog! I bet no punk would lay a hand on his daughter lest he wanted that hand posted back to him a week later.
An old human friend told me that a 15-year old girl asked him to present himself at her bedroom on the night of her 16th birthday with a packet of contraceptives. I believe he did as he was asked.
There was a case here a while back where two teenagers were having a sexual relationship. She got pregnant at 15 and her parents reported her boyfriend to the gardai. Despite the fact that they later came round and accepted their relationship, he was convicted of statutory rape and was put on the sex offenders' register at the grand old age of 16. Last I heard they were still together, living in his parents' house with their baby.
I think any change in the law is designed to protect people like yer man rather than dirty old(er) men. The Law Reform Commission proposed a few years back that the law be changed to decriminalise sex with a girl under 16 except in cases where the man is in a position of responsibility for the girl, or where there is an age difference of 5 years or more. That sounds like a pretty sensible move to me.
That does sound more sensible.
There was a case last year in the states... I think it was Dakota, where a guy was convicted for underage sex, even though he later married his girlfriend ( there was a two year difference) and have now a one year old baby. Despite the fact that both she and her parents spoke for him at the trial he was still convicted and is now not only serving time but is on a SOR for life. That for me is a miscarraige of justice and a ridiculous waste of the court's time. That said, in Ireland there are many serious offenders alreay in jail that can-now- appeal and demand a retrial for their convictions the moment this law is passed.
Over here it's scary because it can be so hard to tell how old people are... From the ages of 12 to 40 a lot of women in South East Asia all look in their mid-twenties, I shit you not. On a non-uniform school day out in my first week one girl was talking to me and for the life of me I had no idea whether she was staff or student...
And do any of you remember that delicious scene in Trainspotting where after a night of drugs, mad sex, passion with a girl he'd picked up - she shoved him out of her room to sleep on the sofa, he wakes up on what was her PARENT's sofa, to be greeted by jolly parents who think he's just a pal of their daughter, so give him breakfast, only to be joined by the one night stand in school uniform?
I do! But it is almost always wiped out by the memory of Spud waking up in his girlfriend's bed having shit himself...and then the mother's tries to take the sheets from hi and the shit goes flying everywhere ....bleeeeee.
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