Age Difference

snoozan

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That's another piece of crap in the law: There is no more "statutory rape"; it's "rape of a child". So when someone gets arrested for "rape of a child", you don't know if she's 7 or 17.

I believe, also, that in some states (maybe all, I'm not that familiar) a person convicted in such a case ends up on the Megan's Law list. I'm all for Megan's law, but somehow these specific incidences seem harshly unfair.
 

MASSIVEPKGO_CHUCK

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No matter how you slice it or interrpret it, the wind up is still the same there, Snoozan; the guy's of legal age, the girl isn't. So going after her sexually, no matter what state they're in just ain't right.
 

xxncxx

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I'm 18 and my girlfriend will be 18 in a few months, so is sex with her still considered statutory rape, even though we're less than a year apart and it's consentual sex?

Funny, because your age says 18 on your profile, I wonder why that is? If you really love her then just wait the few months.
 

circumstances

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in florida 18 years old is the age of consent. however, if you are 24 or under you can have sex with 16 and 17 year olds. if you are 24 or older, anyone under 18 is out.

that makes much more sense than one month over 18 is illegal to have sex with one month under 18. craziness.
 

Principessa

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The OP is young and dumb and unfortunately may face the same bleak future as Genarlow Wilson if he acts on his urges. :frown1: The law is the law; and whether you agree with it or not you must abide by it or face the consequences.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/stories/2007/06/11/0611wilson.html

Genarlow Wilson waits in prison as his release is challenged
Served over 2 years of 10-year sentence for oral sex with underage teen

By JEREMY REDMON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/11/07

Genarlow Wilson, sentenced to 10 years in prison for receiving consensual oral sex in 2003 from a 15-year-old girl when he was 17, remains an inmate today as the state fights to keep him locked up despite a judge's order that he be freed.
• See comments below
AP
Juannessa Bennett smiles Monday as she talks to the warden of the prison where her son Genarlow Wilson is held. She thought a judge's ruling would free him immediately, but state Attorney General Thurbert Baker said the judge overstepped. Baker will appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.
image_5488257.jpg
W. A. Bridges / StaffGenarlow Wilson's felony conviction was reduced to a misdemeanor.
Jenni Girtman/Staff
Juannessa Bennett (center) hoped son Genarlow Wilson was about to walk free Monday. Lawyer B.J. Bernstein is at right.

Wilson, now 21, learned Monday that his more than two years in prison were apparently coming to an end with the order by Monroe County Superior Court Judge Thomas H. Wilson. Within hours, however, state Attorney General Thurbert Baker filed notice that he would appeal the ruling to the Georgia Supreme Court, arguing the judge had overstepped his authority.
That set Wilson's attorneys scrambling to free him on bond from the Burruss Correctional Training Center in Forsyth. But a prosecutor in the case would not immediately agree to a bond arrangement, Wilson's attorneys said. And state prison officials said they would not release Wilson until they receive guidance from Baker's office or the court where he was originally sentenced in Douglas County.
The twists and turns in the legal case sent Wilson's attorneys and family through several emotional highs and lows Monday. Wilson's mother, Juannessa Bennett, praised the judge's ruling, calling it a "miracle." But by afternoon, she was too worn out to speak, said a spokeswoman for her son's attorneys.
One of those attorneys described a telephone conversation she had with Wilson after the judge's ruling.
"I just got off the phone with him," B.J. Bernstein angrily told reporters as Wilson's grim-faced mother quietly sat nearby. "He has now heard about the judge's opinion. Literally, people at the prison were saying, 'You are going home today. Congratulations. I want to say goodbye to you.' And I just had to tell that child he is staying there, that we don't have a bond for him, that we can't get him out."
Bernstein, in a hearing last week, appealed to Judge Wilson to free her client from prison, asserting that his 10-year prison sentence and inclusion on the state's sex offender registry is grossly disproportionate and violates the Constitution. Bernstein also pointed to how the Legislature changed the law last year to make similar acts a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of one year in prison.
The judge granted the appeal, agreeing Wilson's 10-year prison sentence "would be viewed by society as 'cruel and unusual' in the constitutional sense of disproportionality." The judge also changed Wilson's felony conviction to a misdemeanor without the requirement that he register as a sex offender.
"The fact that Genarlow Wilson has spent two years in prison for what is now classified as a misdemeanor ... and will spend eight more years in prison is a grave miscarriage of justice," Judge Wilson wrote in his order. "If any case fits into the definitive limits of a miscarriage of justice, surely this case does."
The judge added, "If this court, or any court, cannot recognize the injustice of what has occurred here, then our court system has lost sight of the goal our judicial system has always strived to accomplish ... Justice being served in a fair and equal matter."
Baker's office responded in a statement to reporters Monday afternoon, saying Judge Wilson has "absolutely no authority ... to reduce or modify the judgment of the trial court, in this case, the Superior Court of Douglas County."
Baker's decision angered civil rights activists, who held a news conference outside his office Monday and called on him to back off the appeal or resign.
"Go — as our designated champion of law and justice — and urge the courts to set this political prisoner free," the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a veteran civil rights activist wrote Baker on Thursday. "You are expected to be more than some robot obeying the whims [and errors] of some heartless machine... Where is your conscience, that you would allow this travesty to occur on your watch?"
Wilson was originally charged with raping a 17-year-old at a party on New Year's Eve of 2003, but he was acquitted. He was ultimately found guilty of aggravated child molestation involving the 15-year-old girl, a crime that carried a minimum 10-year prison sentence under the law at the time. Four other male youths at the party pleaded guilty to child molestation of the 15-year-old and sexual battery of the 17-year-old. A fifth pleaded guilty to false imprisonment.
Their party was captured on a profanity-laden and sexually graphic video filmed by one of the males. The video shows Wilson having intercourse with the 17-year-old and receiving oral sex from the 15-year-old. Wilson's appeal was filed in Forsyth because he is being held in that city in the Burruss Correctional Training Center. The state attorney general's office is representing Burruss' warden in the appeal.

A problem of precedent
Matt Towery, a Republican state House member from 1993 to 1997, said Monday it was never his intent to lock up teenagers involved in consensual sex acts when he authored the law in 1995 that Wilson was convicted under — the Child Protection Act. The bill was intended to crack down on child molesters, but it was amended in the Senate, Towery said, to raise the age of consent from 14 to 16 — meaning consensual sex acts with a 15-year-old could result in prison terms usually reserved for armed robbers and kidnappers.
"Needless to say I think justice was done [by Wilson's ruling]," Towery said. "This has been just an absolute nightmare to see young people such as Genarlow go to jail — compounded by prosecutors and people lobbying — using videotapes and everything in the world — to try to keep him in jail."
State Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) said he worries about the legal precedent the judge set Monday by ordering Wilson freed from prison. Johnson fought an effort in the Legislature this year that would have allowed a judge to modify Wilson's sentence along with many others who were convicted of certain felony consensual sex crimes between teenagers. That bill failed.
"We have all said that was a harsh sentence," Johnson said of Wilson's 10-year term. "The precedent of this is what I'm concerned about. ... The Georgia Supreme Court already ruled on the constitutionality of some of this. I think this was another ... [judge] enjoying his 15 minutes of fame."
Baker is right to be concerned about legal precedents, said Ron Carlson, a law professor at the University of Georgia, who has authored many books on criminal trial procedures and evidence.
"One issue that attorneys general have to worry about is the so-called floodgate problem," Carlson said. "Since dozens and dozens have been sentenced under the law as it previously existed ... the attorney general may well be worried about hundreds of prisoners banging on their cell doors and demanding the same treatment as Genarlow Wilson. That is a valid concern."
 

ManlyBanisters

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There has to be a cut off point. The Romeo and Julliet exceptions / clauses (whatever) in some states / countries cover a lot of cases of young lovers 'consenting' even when consent isn't legally theirs to give but if you start writing in to the legislation that it's OK for a 15.5 year old to have sex with a 18 year old - then it kind of follows that it is ok for a 15 y.o to have sex with a 17.5, and then what about the 14.5 y.o. with the 17 y.o? Surely that's be OK too. And of course if a 15.5 y.o. manages to talk a 13 y.o. in to bed then that's OK too. Is it? I remember how immature I was at 15 - even at 16 (the 'legal' age where I'm from) I was a bit too young in the head to be having sex. Sex is a big responsibilty - there's a lot of stuff to deal with.

There has to be an age limited and that age limit has to be respected. Some people are ready before they hit 18 / 16 - some people think they are ready and are not - I consider my 15 y.o. self to have been in that group. I was, however, an extremely competant driver by the age of 15 (having driven off-road privately a lot) but I still wasn't allowed to get a licence. Should an exception have been made for me because I was ready and safe to drive on the public roads? I don't think so.
 

rob_just_rob

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my previous relationship lasted a year and a half. she's still not 18. i guess i'm a bad boy.

I think there are a lot of people in the same boat. When I was 20 I dated a 16 y/o (as I recall our 2nd date was dinner out for her 16th b-day). And legal, incidentally (not that it matters as we didn't have sex :biggrin1: ).
 

snoozan

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Here's an interesting side-note...

I was in college away from home in a different state when I was 16. In retrospect, I really wasn't ready to be out of my parents' home, but there I was, on a campus with no curfew, m/f rooms, coed dorms, the whole bit. At one point I was having sex with a 23 year old senior regularly. In New York, the state I resided in at the time, the legal age was 17, not that I knew until I just now looked that because no one ever told us-- even though the school had at least 10-20 people in the freshman class that were under 17.

Anyway, no one made an issue of it but I was surprised to see I was jailbait in college. The legal age in my state is 16 for females, 18 for males.
 

B_andyo

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I would have sex, if she wants to tell the police or anything I wouuld wait for a week telling her i will marry her... then stop talking with her.. :) after evidence i was there is gone.