Letters to the Editor
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"The consent issue is clearly not settled" -- NOT
There is no consent issue. If the age of consent is 16 (no idea about the UK -- just extrapolating from US laws), then it is not possible for a minor to give consent. Therefore, consent is NOT the issue.
Anonymous, you read what you last wrote and you will see that you appear to contradict yourself.
The only real issue is whether the 10 year old could have reasonably appeared to be and behaved enough like 16 to fool the adult into thinking that she was. The issue is not how eager men may be to have sex in parks, or have sex with strangers, or a different sort of sexual development in boys than girls. All of that just equals red herrings.
Keep you eye on the ball guys!
Clothing comes into it peripherally because clothing and makeup can make a 10 year old somewhat older. Although I doubt that it can make the vast majority look 16. Those things that might indicate sexual maturity are relevant -- breast vs. no breasts.
Guess what? The prior sexual experience of the child, if any, does not enter into the matter. The only real issue is whether a REASONABLE person would believe the girl to be 16.
The judge might or might not have a reasonable opinion on the matter, depending upon his reasonableness. If he is not reasonable then that is a larger problem. Since this became news, we can conclude that at least some people do not think he is reasonable. However, his opinion is the one that matters IN LAW until the result of an appeal says otherwise.
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Anonymous II,
The only one of your numbered arguments that is relevant is the first one. If the guy had ANY suspicion that the girl was under the age of consent then he is under a legal compulsion to refrain from having sex with her. He doesn't get to wink and nod. Futhermore, if he had ANY suspicion that the ten year old was under the age of consent then what she was wearing becomes moot. He might be using what she was wearing as a defense to his conduct. However, his chosen defense and his actual intent do not exactly equate.
Furthermore, while his intentions and thoughts may matter, what matters more is what a reasonable person might think in the same circumstances.
I find the argument that he might have been aroused completely hilarious. Of course he was aroused. He managed to have sex! If mere arousal got one a pass for illegal sexual behavior, then we could do away with rape and molestation laws altogether. In fact, if arousal were in any a mitigating factor, people aroused by zebras could jump the fence at the zoo and begin humping and claim that they just couldn't help themselves.
There are car thieves who cannot help themselves. There are jewel thieves who cannot help themselves. There are murders who cannot help themselves. Hell! Let's do away with laws altogether!
Sex crime laws exist to protect potential victims and not to pander to whatever arousal perpetrators may feel. There are people who actually ARE aroused by ten year olds, no matter how those ten year olds may be dressed. We call those people deviants.
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it's the first case that bothers me the most
For what it's worth, I could easily have passed for 16 at the age of 10. When I was 14, I used to have seniors ask me to buy beer for them.
However, no one could have mistaken me for a 16-year-old five minutes after I opened my mouth and started talking. A fourth-grader simply can't mimic the behavior of someone in high school. I was an exceptionally mature 4th-grader who preferred the company of adults, and there's simply no way.
The comment about the bicycle is to my way of thinking worse than the comment about provocative dress. Anyone who would think that a new bicycle would make a child "feel better" about being sexually abused clearly shouldn't be walking the streets where other people might mistake him for a human being.
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Thanks AKA Smith
I was going to respond to the "impaired judgment" comment, but I see that you have done so with such flair that there is no more for me to say about it.
And to the Anonymous who commented that our discussion had gotten off track, actually I think this might be one of the most on-track Broadsheet threads I've ever read.
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RE:"The consent issue is clearly not settled" -- NOT
Not sure which anonymous you are referring to, but legally it is obvious no consent can be given by a 10 year old, which was actually in my original post. I was addressing the gray area where a man who presumed a woman was of legal age, was given verbal consent. My question related to whether the girl had given verbal consent to the act, not whether it was legal. Are you advocating all women that have slept with a minor should be immediately imprisoned for the full sentence ?
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re: DonaQuixote, Parson Jim, various anonymouses
Regarding the issue of the girl's clothing, she wasn't wearing Bratz brand underpants, but adult underpants. It also appears, from the judge's comments, that the girl was perfectly aware that these clothes did not make her look her age (she claimed to be 16).
There isn't a way to prevent children from wearing adult clothing and trying to look like adults. Children of all eras have always wanted to wear adult clothing and look like adults, because adults have freedoms which are denied to children. The issue of inappropriate clothing marketed towards children is a strawman at best, and it could even be argued that if thong underpants and frilly bras became standard for 10-year-olds, the average non-pedophile would have LESS difficulty recognizing a 10-year-old who happened to be wearing them - that's already happened to some degree with the "bra strap and visible thong" look which is now more popular with teens than adult women.
To go off-topic for a moment: Parson Jim brought up female abuse of male children. That has nothing to do with this story, but it's worth addressing, I think.
Regarding stats for male vs. female abuse: I've read stats saying as high as 57% of women (from the recovered-memory crowd, whom I find very suspect) and as low as 10% of women were sexually abused as children. The numbers are all over the place depending on how sexual abuse is defined and how the data was collected. The number that seems reasonable to me is self-reported by adult women: 1 in 4. Men, 1 in 7. Sex of offenders: 90% male, with the majority of female offenders being accomplices of male offenders. The female offender who molests alone is rare to begin with and even more rarely caught.
I've known two men who were sexually abused by women. One now runs a safe house for CPS - he was in a relationship with an older woman when he was 15 and she was 27. She had his baby, then died in a car wreck. The baby was adopted by his grandparents. I asked him, "Do you feel that you were molested?" and he said, "Oh, absolutely. At the time I would have said I was having the time of my life, but now that I'm an adult, I realize that a very selfish, sick women took my childhood. She wanted me to face experiences which a 15-year-old shouldn't have had to face."
The second case was a boy who went to my high school who was molested by a teacher. He was 17 years old, a football player, a large, powerful and athletic boy who also happened to be black. The teacher (actually a coach) was white. He told me about the sexual abuse - which occurred when the coach asked him to stay after school for detention, invited him into her office, and demanded sex from him - because the experience made him feel terrible and he wanted to understand why, since as far as he knew it was the sort of thing guys were supposed to enjoy. Talking about it, he realized that he felt bad because she had targeted him because he was black, because he had known discipline problems, and therefore she knew that he couldn't tell anyone in authority and expect to be believed. (Which I think was probably true.)
There's still a perception in our culture that boys who have sex with older women are lucky and have nothing to complain about, therefore there's no crime. This isn't true. Boys don't like being used sexually by predators any more than girls do. I agree with Parson Jim's point (even though it didn't really belong in this thread) that there should be more aggressive prosecution of women who molest boys.
Re: Anonymous who points out that arousal impairs male judgment: sorry, bud, the law says you are responsible for your own conduct even while aroused. Think of dead puppies if you have to keep the little head distracted to avoid sleeping with 10-year-olds.
Re: the other Anonymous who thinks that laws against teen sexual activity are to prevent children from becoming mommies. Yikes. What a mess! 16-year-olds and 18-year-olds don't make ideal mommies either. The laws are there not primarily to prevent children from becoming mothers (forced birth control, abortion after the fact or adoption would all work, if that were the only point) but to protect children from the power imbalance inherent in a child's interactions with adults. Little boys need protecting from predators just as much as little girls do. And the point is not to prevent children from enjoying their tingly bits either. It's to keep them out of situations which have dimensions they aren't old enough to understand.