Talk:Statutory rape: Difference between revisions

In at least one to one of many

The source talks about California courts joining the same decision other courts in other states coming to the same conclusion, previous was talking about only one case happening which isn't true. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Silver163 (talk • contribs) 05:47, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

American slang

Statutory rape is essentially just an American slang term. It has no legal status, and isn't even an issue in less repressive countries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.197.15.138 (talk) 03:53, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Is not being allowed to have sex with minors and the mentally challenged repressive? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.193.142.194 (talk) 16:18, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

USA centered

As the above comment hints at, much or this article, as with MANY Wikipedia articles is very USA centred. American contributors seem to very often forget there is a whole world outside the USA, using terms like 'the government' or 'the law' when they mean "the United States government" or "USA law" Adagio67 (talk) 11:35, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

^I can't believe you spelled 'centered' wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.164.38.81 (talk) 06:31, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

The reason for the USA focus is that most western jurisdictions are far more flexible and accept the fact that a 15 year old girl can be much more mature than a 22 year old guy. So statutory rape is much less an issue here in Europe than in America. By the way, centered is just a regional spelling of centred. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.227.141.86 (talk) 18:04, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Current issues section improvements

This section needs to some improvement for clarity and content. The main issues people seem to have these days with statutory rape laws rest on the following concerns:

• A debate over what the proper age of consent should be with most people who are not pro-pedophilia activist, arguing it should be somewhere between 12-18 years of age, reflecting the current AOC range in Western countries.
• What sort of exemptions to the statutory rape laws should exist such as whether a mistake of age exemption should exists, whether a close-in-age exemption should exists, whether sex between two minors under the AOC should remain crime but be reduced to misdemeanor.
• Whether exemptions should exist in case of legal marriage between an adult and a child or where the adult marries the minor legally after the fact, say due to her being pregnant.
• Even where there is support for statutory rape laws in principle, there is debate on how much time and effort should be put into enforcing such laws, what steps should be taken to discover catch perpetrators, such as requiring pregnant minors to inform on adults who get them pregnant or some other similar reporting requirement by doctors, social workers, etc.
• Debate of whether the strict enforcement of statutory rape laws is a good ways to reduce teen pregnancy involving adult fathers.

As such, this article could summarize the above issues, provided adequate sources can be found for each issues. There is already an article on the AOC debate that could be summarized her with a link to the full article. As far as the current legal cases mentioned in the article, I think they should have their own section regarding legal cases involving statutory rape though any case that directly relates to the above controversies could remain in the section. It may be best to rename the section to something "Current debates" or something along those lines. --Cab88 (talk) 19:27, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

It looks like this article could be much improved by taking some ideas and sources from age of consent. As it is, this is not a good article.160.39.230.130 (talk) 23:15, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

I just tried to add a recent case, but my attempt to cite a reference went wrong. I'm a newbie, and don't know how to cite a reference correctly. If someone could a) correct it, and b) explain how to do it right, I would appreciate it.Anonnymos (talk) 02:02, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Specific laws depending on countries

I've added the template Accuracy dispute to this section, because a crime called "statutory rape" doesn't exist in legal codes of Denmark and the Netherlands (or any continental European country for that sake). It would be described as "illicit sexual relationship with a minor" or "child molestation" (cf. German Sexueller Missbrauch von Jugendlichen), but never as rape. Statutory rape doesn't exist outside common law countries. I think that this section should be either deleted or moved to a more neutral article covering laws against sex with minors. --Seerus (talk) 00:37, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

The lead of the article acknowledges that "very few jurisdictions" use the term "statutory rape." It states, "Although [statutory rape] usually refers to adults engaging in sex with minors under the age of consent, it is a generic term, and very few jurisdictions use the actual term 'statutory rape' in the language of statutes. Different jurisdictions use many different statutory terms for the crime, such as 'sexual assault', 'rape of a child', 'corruption of a minor', 'carnal knowledge of a minor', 'unlawful carnal knowledge', or simply 'carnal knowledge'. In statutory rape, overt force or threat need not be present. The laws presume coercion, because a minor or mentally challenged adult is legally incapable of giving consent to the act."

It also states that "the term 'statutory rape' generally refers to sex between an adult and a sexually mature minor past the age of puberty. Sexual relations with a prepubescent child, generically called 'child molestation', is typically treated as a more serious crime."

So, basically, "statutory rape" is an umbrella term for legal adults illegally engaging in sexual activity with minors. Because of this, I don't see an issue with the section in question being in this article. Flyer22 (talk) 02:47, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Obama conceived when Ann Dunham was underage

There is a current discussion on the Barack Obama Talk Page that editors here might be interested in. The current POTUS is perhaps the most highly visible case of statutory rape. If someone has the verbatim wording of Hawaii law from 1960, that would be a good source to add.--Tdadamemd (talk) 12:29, 31 December 2013 (UTC)