I have been thinking lately that high ages of consent hinder efforts to stop sexual victimization, such as rape and sexual assault.
If one person has sex with someone else who’s age is under the age of consent determined by the statutes in that jurisdiction, then the sex is considered statutorily unconsensual and is thus considered rape. For example, in some jurisdictions, if a 15-year-old boy willingly has sex with a 16-year-old girl, the 16-year-old girl could be charged with rape.
I think we trivialize rape when we treat consensual sex as rape because of the age of one person–at least when we are talking about teenagers. More importantly, I think we risk taking the focus away from forcible rape.
I realize that an older person can manipulate a young person by taking advantage of the young person’s lack of mental development and respect for the authority of older people. However, at least when talking about people over 12 years old, the line between persuasion and coercion is blurry and depends much more on the specific circumstances and specific mind-states of the participants in any given instance.
When talking about two or more people who are each either teenagers or older, I do not think we can tell whether or not the sex was truly consensual or not just by the ages of the two people.
When we assume sex between two people, who are both over 12 years old, is not consensual because of the age of one of the participants, I think we risk wasting resources fighting consensual sex in the name of stopping rape at the expense of actually stopping rape.
If it is alleged that one person actually raped another person who is over 12, then let’s investigate it, and put the accused person on trial if there is probable cause that the accused person actually coerced the victim to have sex. Let’s not just assume the sex was coercive because of the alleged victim’s age.
As for people 12 and under, I am not concerned much about them not having the legal ability to consent. So I would recommend at least lowering the age of consent to 13 years old.
If one person uses the appearance of authority, manipulation or overwhelming persuasion to trick or coerce another person into having sex, then I say charge that first person with rape regardless of the ages of the people involved. I simply do not think that sex between a teenager and an older person is always unconsensual. And I worry that we may waste our resources fighting consensual sex that we falsely assumed is unconsensual when we could put those resources to fighting sex that really is unconsensual.
What do you think?
For similar reasons, I would also propose lowering the age of consent for other actions as well, such as smoking and drinking. But I suppose I’ll wait to talk about until another day.
Thursday, February 4th 2010 at 4:40 pm
Yes, I would also support still keeping large age-gaps where one party is a minor illegal. For instance, if the age of consent was lowered to 13, it would help maybe to say there can be no more than a 4 year difference if either person is under 18 so that it would be illegal for an 18 year old and a 13 year old to have a sexual relationship.
Thursday, October 23rd 2008 at 10:30 pm
Yes Scott that makes total sense.
Tuesday, July 22nd 2008 at 3:12 am
A 14 year old girl who has sex with a 17 year old boy is not fully capable of making a decision to engage in such activity. The 17 year old should have the brains to understand that touching someone so young can destroy his life. nonetheless if to young teenagers engage in sexual activity its seems absurd to accuse one of raping the other.
More often a girl or woman is scarred for the rest of their lives by consents to something they did not understand
Sunday, June 15th 2008 at 10:07 pm
I feel obligated to stand up and make a comment on this. I DO NOT think that the statutory rape law should lower the age at all. If anything it should go up. I agree that a 12 year old is capable of consenting to sexual activity, however when they consent it better be someone no more that 2 years older then them, and even thats stretching it. As a survivor of this crime at 16, which is definitly an age for consent, a crime steal occurred. I was 16 he was 35-45. Not only did I say I couldn’t. When he promised that sitting on the porch is what would happen, it didn’t heused his mind and took it from feeling semi-safe to the point where saying “stop” or No” honestly scared me. We were talking about where he was moving to and out of no where he turned and kissed me. In that moment you are terrified that you need to do what you have to to survive. I was afraid he could hurt/physically force me into doing it. I figured the least painful way was not to say or do anything and just wait and pray that it would end and I would be ok.
If a 12 and a 14 year old want a relationship thats fine most times. But a suicide attempt that put me in a comma, 7 months of treatment for depression and PTSD, and years more of therapy still hasn’t and will never completely heal me or make me forget it.
I think every situation is different, but this is my view.
Monday, April 21st 2008 at 4:32 pm
Not much you can do when states allow underage marriage. When we only lived 40-50 years, that was ok. Now, we live to 80+ and it seems so creepy a young girl marrying a older man, like the sect they just discovered. Great article & keep up the great writing!
Christopher Winkler
Self Defense Products Expert
DefendThyself.com
Monday, April 21st 2008 at 12:10 pm
I find the above content extremely inmature and borderline rude.
I along eith Kath believe we need to preserve our children’s childhood for as long as we can. I think alot of problems with society today are a result of our teenagers trying to grow up too quickly without the resources or capability to to do it responsibly.
Our society is riddled with single parent households, dead-beat parents, men and women alike. Without quoting statistics a child born into and living without one of the parents is far more likely to be not of the moral norm. Maybe if sex were treated more often as the sacred act between husband and wife who love eachother as it should maybe the statistics would lower. Maybe our court systems would be less clogged with child support violations, maybe the need for government assistance, ie: medicaid and food stamps would lower. And maybe just maybe and let me know if I’m wrong but STD’s would be less likely to happen especially those that take lives.
With that all said Scott makes some very valid points and correct me if I’m wrong Scott but I think the point of his blog was to show that we are concentrating too hard and finacially too much on prosecuting teens for having CONSENSUAL sex with their girlfriends and boyfriends most of which because a parent does not like the fact that their teenager either one is having sex or two doesn’t like their teenagers partner. To me this should be left to the parents to deal with consensual sex not our government. The extreme injustice of labeling a teenage boy or girl for the rest of their lives as a sexual offender for the pure fact that our government believes they are too young to have consensual sex is incredibly insane. When idealy the resources to label these teenagers as sex offenders and the money used to do it could be better spent going after the true sex offenders and to prevent the actual sex offense from happening. I’d be willing to bet a good handful of the real sex offenders out there came from single parent households – it’s a vicious circle!
Sunday, April 20th 2008 at 10:53 am
What’s wrong Kath? You didn’t get any when you were younger and are now taking it out by trying to stunt the next generation’s freedom to enjoy sex?
Saturday, April 19th 2008 at 11:53 pm
Keep up the good work with defense. Women need it cause there’s a lot of perverts out there.
Saturday, April 19th 2008 at 1:21 am
I actually disagree with lowering the age of consent. Not because of the points you raised above about the consent issues of underage people vs those of age, but simply because young people under a certain age shouldn’t be having sex. I know, I know, they do and that’s the reality, but if we discourage even just one from doing so, and give them a few more years of their youth, I believe it’s worth having the age of consent set at 16 across the board.
Our kids don’t get to be kids long enough, and anything we can do to let them have that childhood and youth is a good thing. They lose their innocence too early as it is.