Quote:
Originally Posted by willx
Age of consent is 16. This was raised from 14 on May 1, 2008. There is however a second age of consent of 18 where the sexual activity "exploits" the young person --
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I couldn't tell from reading that list of criteria whether exploitation only occurs when one of the parties is an adult. Can a seventeen-year-old boy be charged with exploitation if he has sex with a fourteen-year-old girl? How about a nineteen-year-old girl and a seventeen-year-old boy? Would that be exempted under the "age difference" criterion?
I understand the rationale for distinctions like the one in the Canadian statute, but it seems to me to give much too much leeway to prosecutors and judges to decide whether a particular case constitutes exploitation and creates the potential for uneven jurisprudence.
The sexting cases provide some good examples. In Florida,
two teens were charged with felony child pornography for photographing themselves engaging in an unspecified sex act and emailing the photos to the boy's computer. The sex act itself was not illegal under Florida law, but sending the photographs was. Their convictions were upheld on appeal.
In another notorious case, DA George Skumanick
threatened to prosecute 19 kids (though only three boys) with felony child pornography if did they not attend some re-education sessions that Skumanick organized. Most of the girls agreed to take the classes and avoid prosecution, but three of the girls' parents sued. Two of them were twelve-year-olds who had sent a photograph of themselves at a slumber party wearing training bras! Another older girl was threatened with prosecution for sending a boy a photo of herself wearing a towel but exposing her naked breasts. DA Skumanick claimed the twelve-year-olds were "posing provocatively" despite their wearing as much in the photo as they might wear at the beach. He actually told parents he would consider prosecuting girls who took photos of themselves in bikinis on similar grounds.
These are exactly the type of cases that make ambitious narrow-minded prosecutors lick their lips, especially if they are serving in a conservative area where prosecutions like these might help them get reelected. Luckily the good citizens of Wyoming Country, PA, decided to throw Skumanick out of office at the next election.