Rule of Law vs. Compassion

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This topic springs from the threads concerning an adult and a young teen having sex, getting pregnant, getting married, and then having the baby. In both cases the adults were prosecuted, both plead guilty are were given relatively light prison terms (one got 9 months, the other 30 months). There was also an example of both genders. In one case, it was a 22 year old man with a 13 year old girl, and the other case was a 15 year old boy with a 37 year old woman.

Now, I think we can all agree that adults should not be having sex with children who have not yet reached the age of consent. I think we all agree that this should be illegal and those committing such an act should be held responsible and punished. However, another thing that we notice in these cases is that the sex was consensual, and the adult did marry the child, so I'm not so sure that their emotions were not genuine. I'm at least willing to acknowledge the possibility that they have genuine feelings for each other. I think this should be taken into account as a mitigating factor and should reduce the sentence for cases like these, or perhaps commute the sentence to probation.

There is another benefit to a shorter sentence or no sentence. In any such case where you have an adult and a teen, the monetary needs of the family are most likely going to fall on the adult. They are going to have an easier time getting a job to pay the bills. I'm not sure if sentencing them to prison terms is not in fact punishing the spouse and the baby more than the offender. By sentencing them to prison, there's some other caveats that come along too:

1. They have to register as a sex offender. I'm not sure that these people are an actual threat to other children once they get out. Sure, you can use the arguement that they did it before, so they can do it again, but that's only if you also completely rule out the possibility that the feelings they hold for one another are not genuine. If they are supporting their family, it is possible that they just fell in love with someone who was not yet an adult.

2. One of many conditions upon release is that you aren't allowed to co-habitate with anyone who is still a juvenile, in which case you wouldn't be able to reunite with your spouse upon being released from prison. Such is the case with 37 year old woman. Her husband will be 16 when she is released from prison, and she will be prohibited from seeing him. It's not the case in the other scenario, because the girl is now 15 and will be 18 when her husband is released from prison 30 months from now.

3. Almost all job applications ask the question: "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" These people will have to answer "yes", and at that point, there chances of being hired are greatly reduced. Again, this harms the spouse and the baby as much, if not more, than it does them.

I'm not saying that these people should walk scot free, with no fear ever of any punishment coming to them. In fact, I would make such be known in the probation - that any further illegal activities will be severely punished. However, I think some measure of compassion should be shown to them, not for the sake of the offender, but for the sake of the family they have helped create who are now dependent upon the offender. I would probably recommend a life-time probationary period, where if you ever do something wrong again, not only will you be punished for that crime, but you'll also do time for the initial crime as well.

There are teens who get pregnant every day. Many of them get pregnant by teen boys, but since both are under the age of consent, neither one is ever prosecuted. A lot of the time, the teen fathers leave the teen mother high and dry, and basically cause her to be a single parent, and never support the child. (Legally, they often cannot be held responsible for paying child support if they were under the age of consent - in other words, they are not held responsible for their actions due to their age - of course, that doesn't help the mother in any way.)

I'm not saying that sex crimes against children are OK. What I am saying is I'd rather have an adult and child have a baby together (assuming consent) and have the adult stick around and support the family, than have two teens have a baby, but have the father not held responsible due to his age. It should be obvious, but I'll point this out anyway - I only support the no prison term in cases where it seems there is genuine emotion between the two people. If they are married, and it appears that the adult is supporting the spouse and child, maybe it is the best for all concerned to let the situation continue. If they step out of line again, it should definitely result in a prison sentence, but I'm not sure who is being punished, or for that matter who is being protected, by putting the offender in prison.

 

Generally agree, although there is a danger that in order to avoid a sentance, the offender may pretend to have such feelings before dumping the teenager and child at a more convenient time.

Any punishment should also include some lengthy form of community service, such as cleaning graffiti, clearing litter from local area's etc.

 

Aldeth, you're making a dangerous assumption about the pedophile who marries their victim: they actually care in a way you or I care about our family. This may be true, but can we (as a society) assume this to be true. I say no.

The pedophile has targeted their victim very carefully. They have gone to extraordinary measures to gain the victim's trust and put themselves in a position where the victim will consent to intimacy. Most pedophiles rely on consent it allows them to shift blame to the child in the child's own mind . This is a predator -- granted, they have a illness, but the pedophile is still a sexual predator.

The pedophile used coercion, bribery, guilt, pleasure, and lies to put themselves in a position to be intimate with a child. And now we send the signal that if the pedophile marries his/her victim the legal system will only give a slap on the wrist. The sentances need to be much harsher in both cases -- we are talking about rape here.

You advocate compassion. How compassionate is it to put a newborn in a home with a pedophile? The woman should have her child taken from her. The man should never be allow to see either his "bride" or his child again. Both of the teens involved need a lot of counseling. The parents of these two kids should be closely monitored by child welfare.

Wrong is wrong.

 

We do not know if this is true. It is also possible that the guy was thinking with the wrong head. Like I said, I would only advocate this in a very small pecentage of cases. However, in these few cases I don't know if I feel the statement:

is accurate in the traditional sense of the word. I view rape as having sex without consent, which I view as being different than unable to give consent due to age. To me, it would be logical to link the age of consent with the ability to reproduce. In other words, once you are capable of having sex, you should be able to consent to sex. So the 13 year old girl is close to the limit of being able to reproduce. I'm sure it could happen at 12, or maybe even as young as 10 or 11, but you'd never be able to have sex with say, an 8 year old and claim you were in love.

 

I will never feel it appropriate or acceptable for an adult to be intimate with a child (I believe 16 is the youngest any state allows) -- certainly 13 is far too young to be put in that situation.

I guess we will just have to disagree on that point (which is probably the root of our difference of opinion).

 

Well, I guess the root of our difference is actually in how we answer these two questions:

Who is the victim?

Who is being punished?

I answer the former as no one. The teens involved certainly don't view themselves as the victim, and if there is no victim, is punishment necessary?

I answer the second question with three different name: The adult (directly) along with the teen and the child (albeit indirectly). I find it hard to justify making life extremely difficult for the teen, and especially the baby, who obviously has no control of his/her predictament, becasue of a mistake of his parent.

I guess the bottom line is this: No one appears to be harmed or victimized, and the purpose of punishment is to protect the victims of crime.

 

Just to play a marginal devils advocate

http://www.snopes.com/pregnant/medina.asp

disturbing in the exteme.

 

A large portion of pedophile victims consent (I would say most victims are willing participants from what I've read). These victims don't view themselves as victims initially. But they still ARE victims.

Pedophiles rely on their ability to get the child to WILLINGLY do what the pedophile wants. For the violent pedophile this involves getting the child to come quietly -- for other pedophiles this involves getting the child to consent to intimacy. Both are crimes. In the former case, the child KNOWS they are a victim immediately. In the latter case, it may be years before the child realizes the damage done (well into adulthood).

Your arguement assumes the latter case is 'less wrong' than the former. I completely disagree with that assumption -- both are wrong and there is clearly a victim on BOTH cases. Simply look at the issues facing the Catholic church with pedophilia -- many of the victims were willing at the time, it was shame and guilt that kept the victims from coming forward (once again, the pedophile relies on this). Being a willing participant, in pedophilia cases, does NOT mean it is a victimless crime.

 

Thirteen years used to be marriagable age in many cultures and still is in some. Note that those people have actually married the minors and on release, they would be barred from seeing... spouses. What's the thing with being allowed to marry but not to live together? And what with sex between spouses of whom one is a minor and only that one? Does it (or should it, if you prefer) remove the possibility of being charged with statutory rape?

I don't think consensual sex with a 13 year old is rape in the same sense as breaking by force the resistance of an 18 year old. Not saying it's right. It's creepy. Noticing 14-15 year olds hitting on me or something when I was 18 wasn't really pleasant. Let alone if you're a fully grown adult and the kid is just 13.

I share some of Aldeth's sentiments but I agree with T2Bruno that child molestation (paedophilia is not of itself a crime, it's "only" the motivation of the crime of child molestation) is not a victimless crime even if we're talking about consenting minors.

By the way, playing the victim's guilt and shame like that, in a situation like that one where the offender is in a position of authority, is probably still criminal with adults, so a priest doing that to a grown woman should still face charges IMHO.

I don't like the idea, however, of leaving a teenage girl with a child on her own. If the state is to put her husband in prison in a crime committed on her which she doesn't want him to be punished for, the state should provide for her and her child.

[ March 17, 2006, 21:47: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

A man sleeping in with a 13 year girl in most cases is going to be biologically normal. So long as she has entered puberty, there is nothing psychologically devient about it (he's not a pedophile even if the act is illegal and immoral).

Hell in the 16th century in Europe the average noble girl was married between 12 and 14. There's nothing biologically devient, as a fertile girl/woman is exactly what a male is designed to target, age isn't much of a factor so long as she can reproduce.

Sleeping with minors who are sexually developed or developing is "merely" the violation of a social moral and the law.

 

Actually, sleeping with a person who has been through puberty is not pedophilia. The condition is known as ephebophilia, and the definition is only applicable if the person is only able to be sexually gratified with teens. It is unlikely that either of the adults actually have ephebophilia. Also, unlike pedophilia, the phsycological community states that ephebophilia is completely treatable. These adults are not likely to be a threat to society once released, according to modern views on phsycology. Especially considering that, in at least one of those cases, the offender had previously been able to have normal relationships with adults. I can't make the same statement about the 22 year old male, because I am unfamiliar with the case. However, even if he does have ephebophilia, he can be treated and relapse is considered unlikely.

 

The Law must be enforced, or else it loses it's meaning. If an adult chooses teenagers as sexual partners, what's to stop them from seeking another when the partner gets to adulthood? Better to make examples out of them and deal with the increase in welfare payments...

 

I don't think anyone is arguing that they shouldn't be punished in some way. The question is how.

 

the same thing happens to adults, there are plenty of sexual predators who coerce their victim into intimacy through the same means of trust.

but that is not a crime

 

That's an... interesting way of thinking. So should we first convince the "victim" that he is a victim so he can sue the suspected so we can get the suspected fellow into jail? I agree that everyone under 17 should be 100% off the limits (to the minute), but your way of thinking simply doesn't work in more general scale. If the person does not think there has been any crime at all, even after he has been told about the situation, then there hardly is a problem. This, of course, from the POV of protecting personal security.

 

To comment on the specific example you gave, I think there is a significant difference between what happened here, and what we see happening in the Catholic priesthood. In those cases, there was never any intent on the part of the priest to marry and create a family with the person who he was molesting. For one, a priest cannot marry if he wants to remain a priest, secondly, most of the victims in those cases were not old enough to reproduce, and thirdly, the majority of these cases do not involve young girls, but young boys, so the possiblity of marriage and reproduction were out of the realm of possibility anyway.

Drew's reference to the technical definition of pedophilia is interesting as well. It seems rather logical to me to link the definition to the ability to reproduce. More importantly, we rather arbitrarily set a consent age, and say anyone who has sex with someone below that age is a pervert or psychologocially impaired. And I'm not sure I agree with that either. For example, in the case of the 15 year old boy and the 37 year old woman, if they had waited a year, he would have been 16 and old enough to consent. Is there a significant difference between the pairing of a 38 year old and 16 year old compared to a 37 year old and a 15 year old? To me, there really isn't any difference at all, other than the fact that one is completely legal, and the other completely illegal. Just because one is legal, it doesn't strike me as any more "normal" than the illegal one.

This is an excellent point. And I wonder how they can legally force this to happen. Even if you are a convicted sex offender, it seems like if your spouse is under 18 that you shouldn't be barred from seeing him/her. And most people I know who are married live together, which is also disallowed in this scenario.

Exactly. And that was the point I was making. We draw an arbitrary cut off line, and say anything before is not allowed, and everything after here is perfectly fine, when it clearly IS NOT. Look at basically what the law says. They say that 16 with any opposite gendered partner of age X is fine, where X represents any number of 14 or more. However if you're 15, then the law say it's only OK if X is less than 18. Doesn't this seem strange to anyone but me? It's like teenaged boys are given a license to do whatever they wish without fear of punishment, but if you're older than a teen it's not OK? Why?

Why is it that the law says it's perfectly fine for a 14 year old girl to have sex with a 16 year old boy, but that same 14 year old girl can't have sex with an 18 year old? She's just as sexually mature in either case, and the act is the same in both cases, but one is OK and the other is illegal. If we are going to be inconsistent in how we interpret these things, then we should also expect a large amount of inconsistency in terms of sentencing. Including not sentencing in cases where the adult is supporting his family.

[ March 20, 2006, 18:45: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

Well, given that most people disagree with my opinion, this should spark total outrage. Here's an instance where the defendant will have the charges dropped - and here is no marriage or permanent relationship between the defendant and victim:

Sex Charges Dropped Against Teacher

 

Actually, I agree with you, I just hate the alleys in general so I was keeping my big moutrh shut

 

Considering she's already being punished by another court and is getting treatment, I can understand why the charges were dropped.

 

Yes, but her "punishment" is house arrest, which is far different that what the other two got, which were prison sentences.

My point was only that in the case of a student-teacher relationship, I find her actions more objectionable than the other two who actually married the teens. This woman has no desire to start a life with this teen, and I feel her actions were worse, and yet, she's the one who isn't being punished in any meaningful way.