Challenge 25

[ByGrabtharsHammerWhatASavings]

After being IDed to buy alcohol yesterday (and yes, given that I'm in my 30s that is a not so stealth brag) I got thinking about the way the public reacts to men who commit statutory rape with children who "looked older". When it comes to buying alcohol everybody is very clear that some teenagers look older, that you can't always guess someone's age by looking, and that teenagers lie. If a shop sold vodka to a 14 year old and then said "but she looked 18" everyone would say "well tough shit, everyone knows that some 14 year olds do look 18, that's why it's your responsibility to check". In fact we understand this so well that we have a whole campaign to challenge anyone that looks under 25 to prove they're over 18. Yet when a man commits statutory rape on a young teenager everyone throws up their hands and says "how was he supposed to know, she looked so much older". I'm wondering if we need a similar, either public awareness campaign, or campaign to establish legal guidelines, to make it clear that it is your responsibility to ensure your partner is over the age of consent. So that we get to the point where the man who says "but she looked older" is given the same time of day as the shop assistant who sells alcohol to the wrong person.

It just seems mad to me that we can recognise and react to this known problem in one area, but then fail to apply it more broadly in order to keep girls safer from predators.

Obviously it would need to be done in a way that didn't, erm, make girls look like age restricted consumer products! Clearly this isn't a very well flesh out idea, but does anyone see where in coming from?

"Statutory Rape" is an American phrase and concept.

Rape is a statutory offence under the UK criminal code. There is no other kind of rape.

UK speaks of 'Sexual Activity with a Child," which goes beyond rape to include any sexual contact with a person under 16.

Oh OK, good to know. I guess I was just trying to make a distinction between rape which happens because the girl isn't old enough to give consent, and rape which happens because consent is withheld or withdrawn.

I absolutely agree with you OP.

I've always maintained that the law re: age of consent is there to protect young women and girls.
I see no reason why a man shouldn't be expected to ascertain that the young woman he is going to have sex with is 16+

I realise in a hook up age of instant gratification my views may seem hopelessly old fashioned but as an aside, making sure you know the age of the young woman might also mean taking the time to find out her name and generally show a little restraint/respect?

It all goes a bit grey where the man/partner is also 15 or just over 16.

But if the age of consent was positively promoted it would serve to protect all young women (and young men).
Just because some are full of raging hormones and determined and ready for sexual relationships at a younger age doesn't mean they all are. In fact many aren't. They deserve to be protected, and that includes being protected from peer pressure to do engage in activities they aren't yet ready for.

The law is there to protect young people of both sexes. Males can and are also victims of rape and other sexual offences, alsmost always perpetrated by other males.

The "I thought she was older, yeronnah" defence is very longstanding and established in case law as well as written into statute. It is based on fundamental principles of law, that the intention to commit an offence needs to be proven along with the occurence of the act.

So she looked older. She was wearing make-up. I met her in a pub. And in more recent years, her Tinder profile said and she used her sister's credit card to sign up to the Sugar Daddy site. Etc.

All valid defences.

Not sure how other countries handle it.

So would that defense also hold for shop workers selling alcohol? The shop assistant who sells vodka to a 14 year old clearly isn't intending to commit an offence, so is "she looked older" a valid excuse in that scenario too?

It's a good analogy, IMO. The newer law is based on more modern notions of society's responsibility to protect the vulnerable. The older-established law, last amended in 2003, incorporates a legacy of assumptions about young girls in particular possibly being delinquent temptresses who lead men on.

It is a very difficult law to reform in the UK. The last time, in 2003, the equalisation of age of consent laws was filibustered by one MP, the late Joe Ashton, who claimed that most if not all teachers would in no time be fucking their pupils if they weren't already.

Some months after the law passed, Ashton was himself arrested in a brothel, where he gave a false name and address, along with a number of underaged trafficked girls.

There definitely an assumption that the men in these situations are in some way victims themselves who have been deliberately seduced in order to harm them. The idea that ignorance is a valid defense ignores any responsibility to inform yourself. I have a small rental income. If I didn't file my taxes and claim I didn't know I had to, I doubt that'd be considered a defense. The onus would be assumed to be on to me to find out, prior to renting my flat, whether I needed to a pay tax. Whether I knew wouldn't matter, because it would be considered something I should have known. But we don't seem to treat sex the same way. If you are having sex, it is up to you to establish consent. Feminists have worked hard to put the responsibility for establishing consent on to the individual. It's your responsibility to establish that your partner is fully consenting, including making judgements about how drunk they are, how enthusiastic they are, whether the consent is freely given etc. But we don't seem to speak about age, which is also a barrier to consent. Surely it should be the responsibility of the individual to establish if their partner is over the age of consent, including an acknowledgement of meaningful error margins. It's very unlikely that a woman who looks 30 would be 16. But a girl who looks 18 may well be 14. Surely there should be some age bracket, within which the possibility of error is so high that ignorance isn't an excuse, because it was your responsibility to check?

This all goes back to a campaigning journalist, WT Stead, who purchased a 13 year old girl and then wrote about it. The reaction of the establishment was to charge Stead with child abduction and get him three months in prison on the grounds that he had bought Eliza Armstrong from her mother and not her father, which would have been legal.

There was a public fuss, and in 1885 the law was changed and the age of consent of 16 introduced, only after much delay in the House of Lords where the noble gentlement protested at great length about how this was a denial of their sons' rights to gain essential pre-nuptual experience.

(And Eliza Armstrong was also the inspiration for Shaw's Pygmalion, "buy me flahz, guvnor!")