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She might have been the "town bicycle". I have know girls who were tramps before age 14 where I grew up. They were poor trash trying to get knocked up to trap a man.
I don't care much about the issue, but it isn't a black/white issue.
The law is designed to protect undeveloped girls. If a girl has completed puberty and has the same physical capacity that she will have when she is an adult, she can ethically consent to sex. It's just that that makes the law too difficult to apply and so a blanket policy is used.
But that's just the law. Not ethics.
WHAT????? This is the most self-serving crap I've ever read. Do you read this on some kind of pedophilia apologist forum? The law is designed to protect ALL underage kids, not just those who are "undeveloped." Physical development has ZILCH to do with psychological maturity, which teenagers do not have BY DEFINITION. This is why it's called statutory rape--it is rape by definition, because by definition adolescents cannot consent to sex...especially to some disgusting man in his late 40s!
Ugh, some of these comments are super-creepy. I really, really hope some of you do not work with or around kids.
Very simple. He is in a postion of power and authority over this student. It doesn't matter if he used this power and authority to coerce her into having sex or not. The potential is there to be abused. Therefore, any person within this power framework would be guilty of something at least unethical by abusing said power, and at most illegal for violating state laws concering consent laws.
Now you may disagree with the consent laws. I, too find it somewhat stupid for consent to be different across my state line. What makes the teens over there in VA different than in TN for them to have different consent laws? Not a darn thing. These laws are arbitrary and cannot ever cover the vast spectrum of maturity levels for today's teens.
But it is the law, no matter how you slice it, and until you have a petition signed by the correct number of people within your state and follow all the legal guidelines to get the law overturned, the law should be followed or you suffer the consequences.
Now is that too hard to follow?
Edit: I must correct an earlier statement from a previous psot of mine:
Almost all that have posted in here have said the acts of this teacher are wrong, illegal, immoral and unethical. To wit, the above bird.
wow, because there is potential for "power" to be abused, that automatically means you ARE guilty?
That's ridiculous. So if a person has a gun and walks into a store with an unarmed employee, he's guilty of theft because there's potential to take advantage of the unarmed employee?
And no, just because something is law, doesn't mean it's unethical or immoral.
Yes, it's illegal and could also be termed as "wrong" but its ethical or moral value is unaffected by what legal law says.
It's called the "age of consent," as in, the age at which the state deems a person mature enough to make a rational decision. Not the age someone looks "mature" or knows how to use a condom (heck, apparently they teach that to kindergarteners now). Random person A may be relatively mentally mature at the age of 15, but if you don't have a hard age of consent then you'll have thousands of cases being judged by the standards this idiot judge used ("well your honor, she certainly acted mature, so I'd say that in this case the statute doesn't apply). Does society generally turn a blind eye to pre-consensual sex between two young people? Nowadays, yes. But this is a very different circumstance indeed.
So the state should get to decide when a person can make a rational decision?
Plus, this law isn't even actually applied. Taken literally, a person under 18 cannot be expected to do anything correctly. For example, it would be too much to ask for a 17-year old to attend school consistently because he's "mentally incompetent."
So the law is hypocritical on its face.
And you don't even have a hard age of consent now. You have a range of 13-18 as being the age of consent. Oh, that's definitely a hard line you've drawn!
And there's no reason for the government to even be involved in the first place. If you're messed up enough to try and force ANYONE to have unsolicited sexual relations in the first place, you're not really interested in what the government thinks. In terms of PREVENTING damage to kids, these laws accomplish very little.
Of COURSE it's unethical! Teachers are in a position of trust and authority over students. It's misuse of authority and it's breach of fiduciary trust, a legal principle that does fly in court, when skillfully used. Adults in charge of children and even adult clergy in charge of other adults are NEVER supposed to prey sexually on those in their care! You come across like you're deliberately being obtuse in order to keep the controversy here stirred up.
But there was no force in this case.
You keep insisting there is.
Just because teenagers cannot legally consent to sex does not mean that anytime there is sex, that they were raped.
WHAT????? This is the most self-serving crap I've ever read. Do you read this on some kind of pedophilia apologist forum? The law is designed to protect ALL underage kids, not just those who are "undeveloped." Physical development has ZILCH to do with psychological maturity, which teenagers do not have BY DEFINITION. This is why it's called statutory rape--it is rape by definition, because by definition adolescents cannot consent to sex...especially to some disgusting man in his late 40s!
Ugh, some of these comments are super-creepy. I really, really hope some of you do not work with or around kids.
Psychological maturity comes along with puberty for the most part.
So when you have completed maturity, you are mostly done with emotional maturation too.
You still get smarter as you get older, but with that logic, the age of consent should be 40 then.
It's a dumb decision for both parties because they can't be a couple while she's still in school and once she's done with school, she would be of legal age anyway.
But it's not unethical. It's sort of like insider trading honestly. There's nothing unethical about sharing information amongst others, yet for some reason the government has decided that it's wrong, so it's illegal. But not unethical. Big difference.
Edit: And yes, I do work with kids extensively.
So your logic that you have to believe in a specific argument to work with kids falls flat on its face.
Just because teenagers cannot legally consent to sex does not mean that anytime there is sex, that they were raped.
That's insulting to real rape victims.
I never insisted there was force. Read my posts. You're confusing me with others, I never said that. I've never used the word "rape" in my posts. There doesn't need to be force for trust and authority to be abused. You don't have a leg to stand on, that's why you're putting words in my mouth.
One of the realities of adolescent development is that the age of sexual maturity (the ability to sexually reproduce) and the age of social maturity (the ability to reasonably assess the physical, economic and emotional repercussions of sexual activity) don't tend to occur at the same time. We can certainly argue about what the age of consent should be, but the reality is that statutory rape laws in The US aren't going away. In fact, pressure from special interest groups on both sides of the political spectrum is likely to continue to drive age of consent laws upward. This has occurred in both New York and California over the last couple of decades. It also happened in Canada, which shares much of the political and cultural climate prevalent in The United States.
What is surprising about this particular story is the gender dynamic of the relationship. Adult male/adolescent female relationships, as well as homosexual relationships, typically lead to very long sentences for the adult. In this instance, the sentence is more in line with that generally given to women in adult female/adolescent male relationships.
So the state should get to decide when a person can make a rational decision?
Plus, this law isn't even actually applied. Taken literally, a person under 18 cannot be expected to do anything correctly. For example, it would be too much to ask for a 17-year old to attend school consistently because he's "mentally incompetent."
So the law is hypocritical on its face.
And you don't even have a hard age of consent now. You have a range of 13-18 as being the age of consent. Oh, that's definitely a hard line you've drawn!
And there's no reason for the government to even be involved in the first place. If you're messed up enough to try and force ANYONE to have unsolicited sexual relations in the first place, you're not really interested in what the government thinks. In terms of PREVENTING damage to kids, these laws accomplish very little.
Yes, the state determines when a person becomes an adult in all sorts of cases: voting, driving, purchasing alcohol or firearms, etc., so your attempted analogies don't work. I didn't say a teenager was "mentally incompetent," I said that a minor of a certain age is deemed to be incapable, under the law, of consenting to sex or other behaviors considered to require adult judgment. There's a huge difference. This doesn't mean all children age the same way, or that all adults have sound judgment: it's just that the state must choose specific boundaries to the law, and the age of consent is that boundary.
The state has to pick an age. Rape, statutory or otherwise, is a crime and the state needs rules by which to enforce it. Since we live in a republic in which the states are semi-autonomous bodies with law-granting privileges, it's up to each individual state to determine what it thinks is a reasonable age of consent on which to base the law. Just like each individual state determines when an individual is capable of driving or signing contracts. That's the beauty of the federalist system: you don't like the laws in one state, you can move to one that is more suited to your tastes (though good luck in the U.S.: I think there is no state with an age of consent below 16 here).
Now, generally speaking (as I understand it), statutory rape cases generally receive lower sentences than violent rape cases do (though not as low as was given in this case). That's because the state recognizes that there are some mitigating circumstances which must be taken into account. As such, there are often rules in place that allow sex between two people under the age of consent, or between one under the age and one just slightly over.
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