Ok, I don't often use my blog to talk about "heavy" stuff, but this weekend I saw something very disturbing. Friday night John Stossel did a special report on 20/20 called "AGE OF CONSENT". It really opened my eyes and what I saw was not good. There were two stories that really upset me. The first was a story about two boys, one twelve and the other thirteen. These two boys were in court and faced having their names put on the national sex registry for slapping girls'( of roughly the same age)butts. Yes, slapping them. A game they were playing as young boys almost led to them having their names on the national sex registry for the rest of their lives. At fist I thought I was hearing the story wrong, but no, that was the story. The other story I heard was a story about a boy and his girlfriend that had sex, the boy, being 18 and the girl 16, was charged with statutory rape and WAS placed on the sex offender registry. The girl never said she was forced, never said she didn't want to have sex with him. In fact, she admitted to anyone that would listen that she was a willing participant in the sexual act. However, that didn't matter. This 18 year old young man now will live the rest of his life with his name on a sex offender list.
There were other stories told and most of them were just as crazy as these two. I am not sure why, this really struck a cord with me and I think something needs to be done it fix it. It is an example of a good law not completely thought through. I think that it is fine as a parent to want your kids to wait to have sex, but please be reasonable;prosecuting a teenager for having sex with another teen is just crazy and honestly I think bullying. A good number of teens have sex and with the age of a first marriage being nearly 25 in the US, there is a pretty good chance your kid is going to have sex before they get married. And hey, great for you if your kid doesn't. That said I don't need to send a teenager to prison or put his/her name on a sex offender registry for touching, kissing, having sex with a consenting teenager. Please don't misunderstand, I am not talking about forced sexual acts! These are wrong and should be punished. I am not talking about teenagers molesting young children! That is wrong and should be punished. I am just talking about teens having sex with teens!
7 comments:
I saw that report as well and thought it was crazy!
It is really important that along with talking to your kdis about the consequences of sex they know of, pregnancy, disease, emotional trauma, they also need to know that there are legal ramifications should one of them be above the age of consent and one below.
Any thinking person who can look at sex offender laws in this country today, and agree that we are headed in the right direction is insane. The sex offender registries were started with good intent... to inform parents of truly dangerous predators that might be living in their area. But they have been dilluted to the point of worthlessness. These kids you talk about are just the tip of the iceberg, there are hundreds of thousands of people who are published on state sex offender registries across the country who are no more dangerous than these two kids who love each other. Has anyone you know ever urinated in the woods? If they had been caught, they would be a registered sex offender in many states. Ever sent a picture which may be considered obscene through e-mail? If it was seen by the wrong person, you would be considered a sex offender. The media has whipped the public into a frenzy, where the term "sex offender" has become synonomous with "pedophile" and "predator". The fact that many states and localities not only publicly publish all sex offenders on the internet, but now restrict where they can live and work, and even go so far as to issue special license plates and drivers licenses, regardless of what their crime was, just to be sure that everyone can heap scorn and hate on them, is appalling. The only paralell that I can draw is the Jews in Nazi Germany, who were officially reviled until the general population hated them, then publicly marked them, so the population could identify them, then herded them into ghettos, so the public could fear them, then executed them, so the public didn't have to deal with them. Don't believe me? Check Georgia and Oklahoma, where bills are under consideration to apply the death penalty to repeat sex offenders.
Let me make it clear, I am not a convicted sex offender, and I truly despise anyone who would even consider assaulting a child. But we are trampling the rights of a whole section of the population in this country. Anyone else who is convicted of a crime in this country serves their time and is allowed to go on to try to rebuild their life. No other class of criminal is forced to endure a lifetime extension of their sentence, publication on the Internet of their past, or restrictions on where they can live. In Miami FL, the residence restrictions on sex offenders are so restrictive, that there is not a single section of the city where they can live, and a whole colony of them were forced to live under a bridge. How can a person try to rehabilitate their life by being forced into homelessness? The fact of the matter is that 93% of all sexual abuse to children is done by a person who is known to the child (parent, relative, family friend) "stranger danger" is such a miniscule part of the overall picture, yet we spend millions of dollars to publish the personal data of sex offenders, the majority of whom pose no danger to children or anyone else. Why aren't we publishing the identities of convicted drunken drivers? There's a class of criminals that pose a danger to you and me and children and society at large. And are statitically much more likely to re-offend than a convicted sex offender. (See the Department of Justice study on recidivism of convicted sex offenders at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm#recidivism )There ARE predators out there, predators who are intent on hurting children, and they should be locked up for the rest of their lives. We shouldn't have to publish their information, we should know that they are safely locked in a jail cell. Give the sex offenders who are not dangerous a chance to rebuild their lives, just like we do with any other person convicted of a crime
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