This past Friday I went to a talk by a visiting law school prof on statutory rape. These are her observations on statutory rape laws:
1) They were originally to protect the virginity of upper class women, more as a social thing for their families and marriagability than to actually punish the crime of rape.
2) During the 70/8os/early 90s statutory rape morphed into more of a thing where you men for impregnating young women who with their children would end up on welfare.
3) The laws are now differentially enforced, so the people who really end up getting punished besides the rapists everyone wants to see punished are black guys (either under 18 or who had just turned 18) who get caught with white girls or girls who have rich parents and are disturbed by their kids having sex. ...One of the many situations she discussed to show widespread differential application of the law is was how in the south this summer there were four separate incidents of white teachers from their 30s to early 50s raping their black male students, only no one prosecuted the predatory women...
Her argument was that statutory rape laws should be done away with, and what should happen instead is that you just have regular rape laws, only you have "enhancement" like you do with hate crimes, so there's a much bigger penalty for minors (though the underlying crime is that of rape, as the underlying crime is assault or whatever it would be with hate crimes).
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3 comments:
Makes sense to me.
It may be important to consider that, at least according to my criminal law professor, rape as a crime began as an affirmative defense to a woman's adultry, rather than as a stand-alone crime.
oh my god. cliff reads this?
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