I can't believe I'm giving this guy the benefit of the doubt.
Regarding this statutory rape case in Britain, involving a 20-year-old man who had sex with a 10-year-old victim, Jessica from Feministing is up in arms that the defendant is getting off without any jail time. The circumstances of the case seem to be that the girl looks over the age of consent, asked to have sex, and was outside a pub at the time. The prosecutor in the case sympathizes with the defendant's claim that he honestly believed the victim was old enough to consent. But apparently intent is not a factor in Jessica Valenti's calculus.
No prosecutor ever wants to be in a position that makes it appear that he condones sex between an adult and a 10-year-old. The judge in this case characterizes the situation as "wholly exceptional" which makes me think that perhaps this particular 10-year-old actually does reasonably appear to be old enough to consent to sex (this being a statutory case and not an aggravated rape)—especially given the setting of the encounter. Otherwise, it seems completely unbelievable to me that any judge or prosecutor in Britain would be willing to put his professional and public reputation on the line in favor of somebody who had sex with a ten-year-old.
The only way, it seems, that the defendant could have avoided this situation is if he'd asked the victim for identifying documents, I suppose. In America, even that would not have been enough as we have strict liability laws that define sex with a minor as statutory rape even if you meet the minor in a bar (where everybody is presumably over 21) and you check for ID (which is just an absurd proposition) and the ID happens to be fake.
1 Comments:
Though I hardly thought I'd call the statutory rape of a 10-year-old anything but repugnant, this bizarre confluence of circumstances seriously mitigates the crime. I can't speak for the judge—he may be a misogynist (as some of the commenters on Feministing allege) or he may not—but his verdict in this case seems appropriate. Not that it makes the case any less bizarre, mind you.
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