Age of consent to be reduced

[WestOfCentre]

While I see the need for the de-criminalisation of young people having sex with young people below the age of consent, this is very much open to abuse. Most cildren of this age are too young to make a decision of this nature. Many are pessurised into doing things because they want to feel loved or respected. While Im not suggessting 16 year olds arent responsible, I think we lay too much of a responsibilty at their feet, particularily in our society where sex is a marketed product that pervades every area of one's life. 16 year olds are still children and should be protected.

I think an age of consent of 16 is fair enough for teenagers of similar age, however I think the age of consent should be 18 in cases where the partner/predator is 21 or older. Any thoughts? Am I misguided because I have a daughter???

No not misguided but rather "guided". The fact that you have a daughter means you see this in its human reality rather than some intellectual exercise in ever widening the scope of legal sexual engagement. To a parent it is not a parlour game proving how progressive we are but is rather about our kids and how we best equip them for adulthood and defend them as they get there.

The age should remain at 18 as a guiding notion that we seek for proper and defensible reasons to control the sexual use of the young by the older and the sexual experimentation of immature people who are under intense pressure to conform to peer group.

I empathise with Coles and Commentator on this one. I find myself increasingly unmoved by the arguement for lowering the age of consent.
However, I do feel that the law is almost unenforceable where consent exists. The punishment should fit the crime. Where consent does not exist, the law should be as tough as we can make it.

The debate for me surrounds where consent exists - we have to make a decision between criminalising kids or making them complete some form of education programme involving our family planning agencies (or similar orgs)

[KeithM]

Agree with both your posts commentator. And likewise, I am not a Catholic but would support their position and that of the Rape Crisis Centre on this.

As you say, similarity in age has always been a legitimate defence and will remain so. This is about more than that and indeed to an extent is liberal posturing. Nothing to do with addressing real problems on the ground. Teenagers also drink and smoke below the legal age but don't hear anyone advocating lowering the legal age with regard to them.

It's not that simple. We need laws that can be and are enforced. If we say that sex under 17 is illegal, then we should be prepared to prosecute anyone who breaks the law. We certainly shouldn't be rewarding (with tax payers money) people who have sex under 17 and bring children into the world. If we believed the law was right we should take the children of such relationships into state care and away from the criminals who were responsible for bringing them into the world.

So you support prosecuting everyone who has sex under 16 and take the children of those who have children who were conceived under the age of 16 into state care?

No I believe is an enforceable law. Make the age of consent 14 but only with people under 18. If someone has sex between 14 and 16 with someone over 18 then the old person should be charged with statuary rape.

[owenfeehan]

By the way, to those arguing in favour of retaining the status quo or raising it to 18, a quick look at Wikipedia suggests that, at 17, we already have the oldest age of consent in Europe as it is.

Now that doesn't in itself mean such a proposal is wrong, but it is food for thought nonetheless.

[michael1965]

(and you have to legislate for the general cases, first and foremost), children are more vulnerable and need to be protected more than adults.

Sure you need to legislate for the general case, but typically leeway needs to be allowed for non-general instances. There seems to be very little leeway being allowed in any of these proposed laws. They all seem to be very black or white, using age as the only criteria of assessing the criminality of a sexual relationship.

[quote:1bnj4uhm]The question is where do you draw the line. 18 is the main delineation for most things. I think that reducing it from 17 to 16 for sexual consent is wrong. Personally, I would make it 18, with a defence based on age similarity, but not allowing the age difference to be greater than two years.

I think 18 is too high. There's many 16 year olds holding down full time or near full time jobs, and effectively living independently of parents.

Without doubt there are a huge number of 17 year olds in this category as they start college away from home.

It seems undesirable to me, for example, for it to be illegal for a 1st year uni student to have sex with, say, a third year uni student.
[/quote:1bnj4uhm]
Maybe. The idea of expecting college students to stay celibate seems kind of extreme.

[quote:1bnj4uhm]Both of the above are wrong. The second one more so, because it is rape. There is no consent at all.

If every guy who had consensual sex with a drunk/semi-drunk girl, where otherwise this might not have occurred, was considered as engaging in rape, I daresay we would have a majority of rapists in our 20/30-something-year-old male population.
[/quote:1bnj4uhm]
But you said, one 15 year old got the other drunk. That implies criminal intent - essentially, date rape.

I think the reality is that it's nowhere near black and white as to what defines appropriate sexual conduct and what doesn't.

Yes, reality is not black and white, and that is why we have courts and particularly juries to decide on a case by case basis. But it is possible for the legal and moral principles to be set down clearly I think.

I, for one, would probably weigh factors such as emotional treatment (pre and post event: telling someone you love them etc. when you clearly don't etc.), tenure of a relationship, sexual responsibility in terms of contraception etc. quite highly whereas I would weigh age difference less so.

I think we run a terrible risk in focusing on age as if it was a proxy for all these things, particularly if we act as if the law is the acceptable barometer for sexual conduct. Do we really want this?

If a 19 year old has sex with a 15 year old does this necessarily imply he mistreated her? Is it a heinous crime if they both love each other very much and are sensitive to each others emotions and needs?

What if it emerges that they end up later marrying?

Does it imply he mistreated her? No, but nevertheless it's a dangerous road to go down. How often do 15 year olds have a crush on someone older, who when a bit older and wiser, they wouldn't look at ? As it happens I have a 15 year old duaghter, so the idea does particularly fill me with dread

It is good I think not to con ourselves either into romanticizing the past. It wasn't that long ago that people got married at 14 in Ireland, and child labour was pervasive from 11 or so onwards on the family farm or elsewhere. Were these times of sexual depravity, or just different times in terms of social norms?

Absolutely. They were different times with high mortality and low life-expectancy. Society needed babies, and lots of them...

[popper]

By the way, to those arguing in favour of retaining the status quo or raising it to 18, a quick look at Wikipedia suggests that, at 17, we already have the oldest age of consent in Europe as it is.

Now that doesn't in itself mean such a proposal is wrong, but it is food for thought nonetheless.

What a great argument. Maybe we should also emulate Bosnia (age of consent 14) in having a sectarian civil war?

[cyberianpan]

Girl, 13, charged as sex offender and victim

Salt Lake City - Utah Supreme Court justices acknowledged Tuesday that they were struggling to wrap their minds around the concept that a 13-year-old girl could be both an offender and a victim for the same act - in this case, having consensual sex with her 12-year-old boyfriend.
...
And Chief Justice Christine Durham wondered if the state Legislature had intended the "peculiar consequence" that a child would have the simultaneous status of a protected person and an alleged perpetrator under the law.

[FutureTaoiseach]

I see the Catholic Church has decided to poke its big nose into this issue again, and Bertie is sayin this isn't a done deal. Liz O'Donnell was right - the cosy fonecalls to All Hallows are a relic of a discredited past when the hierarchy dictated govt policies....the remnants of the 'special-relationship' between Church and State must end...

[jady88]

the age of consent shoukd be raised to 18, i mean if we don't have the right to smoke or drink how can we claim that sexual intercourse is less serious

[FutureTaoiseach]

the age of consent shoukd be raised to 18, i mean if we don't have the right to smoke or drink how can we claim that sexual intercourse is less serious

No I disagree.

[Dee Four]

the age of consent shoukd be raised to 18, i mean if we don't have the right to smoke or drink how can we claim that sexual intercourse is less serious

Its not about taking things more or less seriously. Its about deciding whether something should or shouldn't be criminalised. You may believe its wrong for kids to be having sex at 16, but still think that these kids aren't being criminals. Anyone who thinks teenagers give a fliying flip what the law says when it comes to the age of consent need their head examained.