The strange reaction to the death of a child rapist drag queen

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An article by James Esses on the funeral of Darren Moore -a drag queen who was murdered in Cardiff city centre.
Although Moore had a prior history of convictions for child sexual abuse the Council closed off roads in central Cardiff for the funeral and news coverage has been very positive about him.

t.co/cvxmcibFdz

This is so abhorrent. My love is for the victims and their families. This is such a crude and cruel denial of reality. How dare the authorities collude with the abusive gaslighting of child rape victims.

It is what I hate about MN. Loads of people pronouncing as fact things they know nothing about.

During the campaign for equalisation of sexual consent ages cases were highlighted of young men who were partners but one was prosecuted for sex with a child. They were close in age.

In 1991, 169 men who’d had sex with another man were convicted of underage sex in England and Wales, and 13 of them sent to prison. In 1994, the age of consent for men who have sex with men was reduced to 18 - before that it was 21. An equal age of consent was finally secured in 2001.

@DessertsForAll he wasn't an adult who was prosecuted for having sex with a child. He was a 14 year old boy who was given a 3 year sentence for raping a child.

And he was prosecuted in 1999 - the year before the age of consent was equalised.

What @NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision posted is 100% correct. I was there. I knew Mark Ashton in the 1980s.

I specifically said I was not commenting on this case as I know nothing about it. I was replying to some of the other comments on this thread claiming that no one was prosecuted or jailed under unequal age of consent laws more recently. That is not true.

So what’s your alternative suggestion?

So what's your point @DessertsForAll? Because it has nothing to do with this thread. Unless you're implying that all gay men are paedophiles which I hope you're not.

I am saying that men were prosecuted for consensual sex before the age of consent was equalised. And to state that never happened is simply wrong. There were prosecutions right up till the equalisation at 16.

But what has that got to do with the thread?

I have already said it was in response to some specific comments.
Why are you hounding me about this?

I'm not.

Two underage boys of a similar age would both be prosecuted tho, or neither.

It’s the non consensual aspect that matters when neither the perp nor victim are adults.

Adults have always - and still are thankfully - been prosecuted for having sex with children.

If you're arguing that children can give meaningful consent to sex with an adult, you're in the wrong board.

Which is what happens when 14 year olds rape, whether they are raping boys or raping girls, the act is the same, the trauma is the same. Age of consent has nothing to do with it.

Frankly, you are a sterling example of what I said before- that people were conflating different historical periods together.

Read your own post: 1991! We are talking about 1999. The bill to equalise it got all the say through the House of Commons in summer of 1998. The political climate changed markedly between 1991 and 1999. Recall that in 1993, three gay men went all the way to the European Court of Human Rights regarding the UK's different age of consent, and won. That led to the UK dropping the age to 18, and the initial proposal in 1994 was 16.

You call me naive. So what, in your head, do you think the process of events would have been that allowed a 14 year old to be prosecuted for willing activity with another child. In your answer, remember it is 1999. Not 1964, not 1973, not 1991. But 1999.

Adults get away with it a surprising amount. Sometimes their victims are still too much in the groomer's thrall to be witnesses (it's not very useful to the prosecution if the witness is in love with her or his much older abuser, and willing to deny and minimise what physical contact happens).

Other times, they're not the kind of witness the jury likes to believe, or they break down under questioning, or the defence convinces the court that the child victim was no angel.

Or the local prosecutions decide there is simply no way a prosecution will succeed and there is no point in taking it to court.

Weirdly, none of that applied in this case, and apparently a 14 year old boy ended up successfully prosecuted for willing activity with a close-in-age peer.

There is a man I know of who was convicted of rape of a boy when he was 12. Before any of you get excited about homophobia and make up a story about homophobically-motivated prosecution, the victim was 5. That's why he's on the sex offender's register.

@NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision It was still happening until the law was changed. Those three men won at the European Court but it still was not enacted. A "compromise" of 18 instead of 21 was passed. So even then it was not an equal age of consent.

Please provide evidence of men being convicted of consensual sex with other adults.

And the dates.

What point are you trying to make here? Genuinely asking.

You have replied to a post of mine saying it was dropped to 18 in 1994, by... telling me it was dropped to 18 in 1994. You have repeatedly posted that men over the legal age of consent were prosecuted for having younger, willing partners, as if it is relevant to the purported scenario of a child under the age of consent being prosecuted for mutual willing activity (and sentenced to a young offender's institution. Three years was it?)

I'm sure men over the age of consent were prosecuted. That is the point of an age of consent. How is that relevant?!

I'll note here that you mentioned that in 1991, 169 men who’d had sex with another man were convicted of underage sex in England and Wales, and 13 of them sent to prison.

Only 13 men out of 169 men over 21 with younger partners.

How strange that this 14 year old got a custodial sentence in 1999, and 156 adult men in 1991 didn't.

I have explained many times why I commented. I hate inaccurate comments posted as fact. Some people were saying that people were not being prosecuted for breaking the unequal age of consent when they were, right up till it was changed.
And the point is it was homophobic. Because these were consenting people whose sex would have been legal if they were male and female couple.

I don't think anyone did say that.

I said that given the political climate then, no-one would have prosecuted an underage boy for having willing activity for a similarly aged peer, and your posts did read as if you were replying to me.

So if that's what you thought I'd said, it explains a lot. Personally, I hate people not bothering to read my posts. We all have our little quirks.

I have reminded myself of what I did say, and it is this. Note the bold clause, which was there to start with. I did not say "we stopped prosecuting men". It would make no sense to do so. That was why there was a campaign to drop the age to 16. There wouldn't have been if the law wasn't being enforced ever. Goddess give me strength.

Me: That was ended in 1967, provided the men were over 21. Under John Major, an amendment was put forward to drop the age of consent for males with males to 16. It failed, and the age of consent was dropped to 18 in 1994 as a compromise.

You just now: And the point is it was homophobic. Because these were consenting people whose sex would have been legal if they were male and female couple.

Are you perhaps on a different thread? Sewell's acts WOULD NOT have been legal if the victims were girls. It is illegal and wrong to rape female children and male children. Consensual sex between adults is not relevant, whether it was criminalised or not.

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