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Arguments Against Statutory Rape

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Jack and Jill went up the hill to have some sex with each other. Jill said yes, but her dad found out.. Now Jack’s serving time in prison. Should a person who commits a consensual sexual act be punished with prison time? Because of Statutory Rape Laws, he/she can be. These laws criminalize any person who performs sexual acts with a person under the age of consent (which is usually between 16 and 18) even if the act was consensual. In the eyes of the law, a person cannot consent to any sexual act until they have reached the age of consent. A person charged with Statutory Rape serves a mandatory sentence ranging from one to fifty years - in some cases life - in prison. This depends on the age of the defendant and the “victim” at the time the …show more content…

In Mike Cernovich’s article “The Hell of Sex Offender Registration” he cites John (a man on the sex offender registry) as saying “[O]ne of the biggest problems with the registry [is that p]eople who are on it are automatically assumed to be the worst of the worst through society's eyes.” Many people can attest to this. Most of the people on the sex offender registry are not serial rapists or child molesters, they are mostly people convicted of small offenses - such as Statutory Rape. If someone is found to be on the sex offender registry by a person who knows them, their whole life is gone. They lose jobs, relationships, even insurance because they are believed to be a child molester when really it might have been as trivial as sexual harassment. John was put on the registry for sleeping with a 14 year old when he was 25. The act was completely consensual, and while the huge age difference is appalling, he states he met her at a party and believed she was at least 21 because she was drinking and smoking. It didn’t matter that she came onto him, or that he wasn’t generally one to go off and have sex with random people. All that mattered was that it happened. John also states …show more content…

On top of that, laws regarding Statutory Rape are different from one state to the next. “30 states currently consider 16 to be the age of consent; the remaining 20 states set it either at 17 or 18.” (Schwiegershausen “What You Should Know About Statutory-Rape Laws”). Some states allow the use of mistaken age or a small age gap (Romeo and Juliet Laws) as a defense against charges of Statutory Rape, and some states do not. This causes a lot of confusion as to what the laws are, especially for those moving from state to state a lot. Many people (minors especially) do not think it is an issue because if it’s consensual, why should age matter? The median age difference in Statutory Rape cases is 6 years. There are plenty of people who are married and have kids who are 6 or less years apart in age. Often because of this belief they do not take the time to research and discover the laws, and then they end up in a legal mess because it never occurred to them that consensual sexual activities would send one, or both, of them to prison. Those who understand Statutory Rape laws state that if it were truly consensual it wouldn’t be prosecuted, but there is a huge flaw in this line of thinking. If the law states that it is illegal to have sex with a person under the age of consent, and the law assumes that if it’s consensual it will not be brought to the court; that

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