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| If the allegations are true, was Bowie a rapist? |
| Yes, clearly. They were underage, end of story. |
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| If he knew they were underage, yes, but otherwise no. |
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| No. This wasn't rape. |
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| Total Votes : 8 |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| You do not speak with respect. What specifically makes you think of that? |
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Wokko 
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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| stui magpie wrote: | I don't think age of consent laws are ridiculous. I recall my daughter when she was 14 [shudder] She's now 23 and admits she was an utter little bitch. Daddy threatening to snap the neck of the 19 yr old douche who was stalking her didn't overly help the relationship at the time, but time moves on. 
My main point above which seems to have been missed, maybe I didn't express it well enough is that this shit happened in a different time, in a different culture. If the young lady wanted to make a complaint now, no different to Rolf harris, but she doesn't. All these years later and she doesn't. Same as Bill and mandy. |
A Stalker is breaking other laws though, the age of the two is irrelevant. When my girl is 14, if some douche is stalking her then he'd be getting one warning too no matter what the age. Of course if she's pursuing HIM, then as unhappy as I'm sure I'd be, I wouldn't want the guy charged with a crime if anything happened between them. |
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Wokko wrote: | Age of consent laws are ridiculous, they place an arbitrary value on age as a determinant of the ability to make rational decisions. I would suggest that a 25 year old virgin man having sex with a 15 year old experienced girl is far less likely to understand the consequences of his actions than she is and be able to give informed consent, and yet HE would be the one off to jail in that scenario.
Women will always seek out higher status males, and men will always seek out young, attractive, fertile women. I would suggest the 'age of consent' be simply set at 'post pubescent' and anyone engaging in acts with pre pubescents, whether male or female are charged as paedophiles. Anyone else who hasn't broken any normal rape or sexual assault laws should be free to just go about their business. |
I'm surprised you take that view. You don't think there's a significant power imbalance between a 13/14 year old and a 40 year old man that could lead to serious exploitation? I'm not saying that every sexual encounter between a 15 year old and an adult is inherently exploitative, but I think we do need to draw the line somewhere. At some point, we have to be able to say, no matter how much they 'consent' at the time, a person of a certain age is too young to make that decision, and short of calling in a team of psychologists for every one of these court cases (perhaps not such a bad idea) you need the blunt instrument of an age of consent. You yourself have effectively argued for that anyway by drawing the line at puberty.
It's like anything else, whether it's 0.05 blood alcohol or voting age or the time you're given to pay a speeding fine. Nobody said that there's anything magical about a given cut-off, that everyone is sober at 0.049 and drunk at 0.051 or that someone is unable to properly consent to sex at 15 and 11 months but fair game 31 days later; it's simply there because you need to have one, and it's the one that seems to make the most sense in an average scenario.
As an aside, I've known at least three women closely who lost their virginity at 14 or 15 to men in their 20s. All of them have said that it was a willing decision on their part and that they don't regret it. Perhaps that means that prosecuting those men now would be wrong and absurd, but how could anyone (particularly the adult men) know at the time that the younger party wouldn't look back on the encounter in adult life and feel exploited, as happens in so many of these cases? It seems like one almost has to punish the older party in order to enforce the principle, rather than necessarily as a response to the specific victimisation or lack thereof. If charges had been pressed at the time – say, by the minor's parents – what defence would he have? "She was up for it, your honour?". Good luck with that.
(Edit: just to muddy the waters a little, I have a big problem with the terminology of 'statutory rape' and would prefer that it be replaced with a different label altogether, such as 'sexual exploitation of a minor'. If you have to whack a 'statutory' in front of it, you've more or less admitted that it's not actually rape at all – it's like calling it 'rape by technicality'.)
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| David wrote: | | Wokko wrote: | Age of consent laws are ridiculous, they place an arbitrary value on age as a determinant of the ability to make rational decisions. I would suggest that a 25 year old virgin man having sex with a 15 year old experienced girl is far less likely to understand the consequences of his actions than she is and be able to give informed consent, and yet HE would be the one off to jail in that scenario.
Women will always seek out higher status males, and men will always seek out young, attractive, fertile women. I would suggest the 'age of consent' be simply set at 'post pubescent' and anyone engaging in acts with pre pubescents, whether male or female are charged as paedophiles. Anyone else who hasn't broken any normal rape or sexual assault laws should be free to just go about their business. |
I'm surprised you take that view. You don't think there's a significant power imbalance between a 13/14 year old and a 40 year old man that could lead to serious exploitation? I'm not saying that every sexual encounter between a 15 year old and an adult is inherently exploitative, but I think we do need to draw the line somewhere. At some point, we have to be able to say, no matter how much they 'consent' at the time, a person of a certain age is too young to make that decision, and short of calling in a team of psychologists for every one of these court cases (perhaps not such a bad idea) you need the blunt instrument of an age of consent. You yourself have effectively argued for that anyway by drawing the line at puberty.
It's like anything else, whether it's 0.05 blood alcohol or voting age or the time you're given to pay a speeding fine. Nobody said that there's anything magical about a given cut-off, that everyone is sober at 0.049 and drunk at 0.051 or that someone is unable to properly consent to sex at 15 and 11 months but fair game 31 days later; it's simply there because you need to have one, and it's the one that seems to make the most sense in an average scenario.
As an aside, I've known at least three women closely who lost their virginity at 14 or 15 to men in their 20s. All of them have said that it was a willing decision on their part and that they don't regret it. Perhaps that means that prosecuting those men now would be wrong and absurd, but how could anyone (particularly the adult men) know at the time that the younger party wouldn't look back on the encounter in adult life and feel exploited, as happens in so many of these cases? It seems like one almost has to punish the older party in order to enforce the principle, rather than necessarily as a response to the specific victimisation or lack thereof. If charges had been pressed at the time – say, by the minor's parents – what defence would he have? "She was up for it, your honour?". Good luck with that.
(Edit: just to muddy the waters a little, I have a big problem with the terminology of 'statutory rape' and would prefer that it be replaced with a different label altogether, such as 'sexual exploitation of a minor'. If you have to whack a 'statutory' in front of it, you've more or less admitted that it's not actually rape at all – it's like calling it 'rape by technicality'.) |
Great post. Agree with it all.
If the girls did not feel taken advantage of, even years later, well who's to call it rape? That law also leaves men open to being accused if something went wrong in the relationship. Nothing like a vindictive female. I do however get why the laws there. It's fairly easy to charm a young girl into doing something, and not always a good idea. The age of consent is still 16 I believe. So anything younger is still not on, for either sex, and I like your term sexual exploitation of a minor.
None of my friends were having sex at 14/15 that I knew of anyway, most kept their legs closed til they were at least "16 and legal" as they used to call it. And I'd only suspect a couple of my kids friends to have done the deed before, well 15 anyway. Is it really that common for 14 year olds?
I think we all remember the Mandy thing, she was such a looker, great hair and deer caught in the headlights eyes! He was a not real good looking old rocker! But it lasted. Still, she was 14, and really, you could only call that grooming.
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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| David wrote: | I'm surprised you take that view. You don't think there's a significant power imbalance between a 13/14 year old and a 40 year old man that could lead to serious exploitation? I'm not saying that every sexual encounter between a 15 year old and an adult is inherently exploitative, but I think we do need to draw the line somewhere. At some point, we have to be able to say, no matter how much they 'consent' at the time, a person of a certain age is too young to make that decision, and short of calling in a team of psychologists for every one of these court cases (perhaps not such a bad idea) you need the blunt instrument of an age of consent. You yourself have effectively argued for that anyway by drawing the line at puberty.
It's like anything else, whether it's 0.05 blood alcohol or voting age or the time you're given to pay a speeding fine. Nobody said that there's anything magical about a given cut-off, that everyone is sober at 0.049 and drunk at 0.051 or that someone is unable to properly consent to sex at 15 and 11 months but fair game 31 days later; it's simply there because you need to have one, and it's the one that seems to make the most sense in an average scenario.
As an aside, I've known at least three women closely who lost their virginity at 14 or 15 to men in their 20s. All of them have said that it was a willing decision on their part and that they don't regret it. Perhaps that means that prosecuting those men now would be wrong and absurd, but how could anyone (particularly the adult men) know at the time that the younger party wouldn't look back on the encounter in adult life and feel exploited, as happens in so many of these cases? It seems like one almost has to punish the older party in order to enforce the principle, rather than necessarily as a response to the specific victimisation or lack thereof. If charges had been pressed at the time – say, by the minor's parents – what defence would he have? "She was up for it, your honour?". Good luck with that.
(Edit: just to muddy the waters a little, I have a big problem with the terminology of 'statutory rape' and would prefer that it be replaced with a different label altogether, such as 'sexual exploitation of a minor'. If you have to whack a 'statutory' in front of it, you've more or less admitted that it's not actually rape at all – it's like calling it 'rape by technicality'.) |
Firstly, in Australia I believe the charge is 'Carnal Knowledge', Statutory Rape is an American legal term.
Secondly, there are power imbalances in many relationships if not all of them. I would think the number of 14 year olds and 40 year olds who are willingly engaging in sexual relations to be miniscule, but those who are should be left alone to sort out there own lives. What you describe happening years down the line sounds suspiciously like 'regret rape', and in effect that's what these laws are. Apart from finding the pairing of an older and younger person 'icky' what actual harm is being done? To say that a young person (almost inevitably a girl in these anecdotes) is incapable of making decisions is paternalistic nonsense. Sure their decisions might be bad ones, and as a parent I wouldn't be advocating my daughter even spending time with some guy who is my age, and I'd actively be chasing him off, but equally I wouldn't want him in Jail for a consensual act.
A child could feel equally expolited from being ripped off in a shop, but we don't ban children from trade just because they might make bad decisions, nor do we jail the shop keeper for expoliting their naïvity. The kids need to be taught by their parents and raised well to make decent decisions and also to protect them where possible from the bad ones. There may be factors that can be legally determined that show an inability to consent such as being too immature due to disability or of too low intelligence or perhaps an extended coercion (grooming) but I don't think age alone is adequate. Far too many innoncent people (and I use the term morally, not legally) would be getting caught up in these laws (like a 14 year old with an 18 year old boyfriend for example). |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| I can chat with people on the web for you. |
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think positive
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Joined: 30 Jun 2005
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| Wokko wrote: | | David wrote: | I'm surprised you take that view. You don't think there's a significant power imbalance between a 13/14 year old and a 40 year old man that could lead to serious exploitation? I'm not saying that every sexual encounter between a 15 year old and an adult is inherently exploitative, but I think we do need to draw the line somewhere. At some point, we have to be able to say, no matter how much they 'consent' at the time, a person of a certain age is too young to make that decision, and short of calling in a team of psychologists for every one of these court cases (perhaps not such a bad idea) you need the blunt instrument of an age of consent. You yourself have effectively argued for that anyway by drawing the line at puberty.
It's like anything else, whether it's 0.05 blood alcohol or voting age or the time you're given to pay a speeding fine. Nobody said that there's anything magical about a given cut-off, that everyone is sober at 0.049 and drunk at 0.051 or that someone is unable to properly consent to sex at 15 and 11 months but fair game 31 days later; it's simply there because you need to have one, and it's the one that seems to make the most sense in an average scenario.
As an aside, I've known at least three women closely who lost their virginity at 14 or 15 to men in their 20s. All of them have said that it was a willing decision on their part and that they don't regret it. Perhaps that means that prosecuting those men now would be wrong and absurd, but how could anyone (particularly the adult men) know at the time that the younger party wouldn't look back on the encounter in adult life and feel exploited, as happens in so many of these cases? It seems like one almost has to punish the older party in order to enforce the principle, rather than necessarily as a response to the specific victimisation or lack thereof. If charges had been pressed at the time – say, by the minor's parents – what defence would he have? "She was up for it, your honour?". Good luck with that.
(Edit: just to muddy the waters a little, I have a big problem with the terminology of 'statutory rape' and would prefer that it be replaced with a different label altogether, such as 'sexual exploitation of a minor'. If you have to whack a 'statutory' in front of it, you've more or less admitted that it's not actually rape at all – it's like calling it 'rape by technicality'.) |
Firstly, in Australia I believe the charge is 'Carnal Knowledge', Statutory Rape is an American legal term.
Secondly, there are power imbalances in many relationships if not all of them. I would think the number of 14 year olds and 40 year olds who are willingly engaging in sexual relations to be miniscule, but those who are should be left alone to sort out there own lives. What you describe happening years down the line sounds suspiciously like 'regret rape', and in effect that's what these laws are. Apart from finding the pairing of an older and younger person 'icky' what actual harm is being done? To say that a young person (almost inevitably a girl in these anecdotes) is incapable of making decisions is paternalistic nonsense. Sure their decisions might be bad ones, and as a parent I wouldn't be advocating my daughter even spending time with some guy who is my age, and I'd actively be chasing him off, but equally I wouldn't want him in Jail for a consensual act.
A child could feel equally expolited from being ripped off in a shop, but we don't ban children from trade just because they might make bad decisions, nor do we jail the shop keeper for expoliting their naïvity. The kids need to be taught by their parents and raised well to make decent decisions and also to protect them where possible from the bad ones. There may be factors that can be legally determined that show an inability to consent such as being too immature due to disability or of too low intelligence or perhaps an extended coercion (grooming) but I don't think age alone is adequate. Far too many innoncent people (and I use the term morally, not legally) would be getting caught up in these laws (like a 14 year old with an 18 year old boyfriend for example). |
Obviously haven't had much to do with emotional, desperate to fit in, falls in love in 15 sec, 14 year old girls if you think they should be "just left alone". The maturity growth between 14 and 18 is massive, and that 14 year kid is for 99% of the population, whether male or female, is not ready to make an educated decision about sex.
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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| think positive wrote: |
Obviously haven't had much to do with emotional, desperate to fit in, falls in love in 15 sec, 14 year old girls if you think they should be "just left alone". The maturity growth between 14 and 18 is massive, and that 14 year kid is for 99% of the population, whether male or female, is not ready to make an educated decision about sex. |
They're not ready to make an educated decision about what to eat for breakfast, I don't see that as a reason to jail someone without evidence of force, coercion or diminished capacity of the teenager.
They should be just left alone by the law, a good parent isn't going to just let their kid do something so stupid but why should an equally besotted older guy (or woman) maybe going through a rough time and blinded by the affection be sent to jail for it? Sure the parents should intervene, sure society can judge the person, but jail?
People don't seem to understand or care what a horror it would be to be locked away in a place like that, and the people you want locked up aren't your hardened crim who can look after themselves either. |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Wokko wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | I don't think age of consent laws are ridiculous. I recall my daughter when she was 14 [shudder] She's now 23 and admits she was an utter little bitch. Daddy threatening to snap the neck of the 19 yr old douche who was stalking her didn't overly help the relationship at the time, but time moves on.
My main point above which seems to have been missed, maybe I didn't express it well enough is that this shit happened in a different time, in a different culture. If the young lady wanted to make a complaint now, no different to Rolf harris, but she doesn't. All these years later and she doesn't. Same as Bill and mandy. |
A Stalker is breaking other laws though, the age of the two is irrelevant. When my girl is 14, if some douche is stalking her then he'd be getting one warning too no matter what the age. Of course if she's pursuing HIM, then as unhappy as I'm sure I'd be, I wouldn't want the guy charged with a crime if anything happened between them. |
I said stalking, I probably should have said grooming. He was chatting her up on social media at the time, pushing all the right buttons and she was receptive to it. She was suddenly getting the kind of attention she'd never had before and as I said above it was pushing every button in the right order. She was totally naive to what was going on but it stuck out like dogs balls. She hated my guts at the time, but sometime later acknowledged that I'd done the right thing.
To David's points about power imbalance and the use of the term rape I could not agree more.
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Joined: 30 Jun 2005
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| Wokko wrote: | | think positive wrote: |
Obviously haven't had much to do with emotional, desperate to fit in, falls in love in 15 sec, 14 year old girls if you think they should be "just left alone". The maturity growth between 14 and 18 is massive, and that 14 year kid is for 99% of the population, whether male or female, is not ready to make an educated decision about sex. |
They're not ready to make an educated decision about what to eat for breakfast, I don't see that as a reason to jail someone without evidence of force, coercion or diminished capacity of the teenager.
They should be just left alone by the law, a good parent isn't going to just let their kid do something so stupid but why should an equally besotted older guy (or woman) maybe going through a rough time and blinded by the affection be sent to jail for it? Sure the parents should intervene, sure society can judge the person, but jail?
People don't seem to understand or care what a horror it would be to be locked away in a place like that, and the people you want locked up aren't your hardened crim who can look after themselves either. |
Unfortunately not every teenager has good parents. And no they should not be left alone by the law, not if they are grooming a child to take part in a relationship, that's not love, that's taking advantage.
Going through a rough time and blinded by affection! That's looking for love in all the wrong places. Maybe they are too much of a ^&*^*% to look in their own, a a legal, age bracket!
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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Having elaborated my point about a situation above, let me now put the counter argument.
About 16 months after that incident, she made friends with a friend of her brother who was 18. She was 15. She came to me and asked if they could "go together", basically be boyfriend and girlfriend. We discussed and I said yes. I also spoke to him and said that once she turned 16 anything was up to her, prior to that I'd break both his legs.
Now they didn't wait til she was 16 but they were together for nearly 3 years.
Should I call the cops? I'm not going to. That was 8 years ago and in the context of a relationship. I watched them together and had no fears about a power imbalance or her being taken advantage of. In this case in my mind her birthday was an arbitrary date, but to the letter of the law................
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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think positive
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Joined: 30 Jun 2005
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| stui magpie wrote: | Having elaborated my point about a situation above, let me now put the counter argument.
About 16 months after that incident, she made friends with a friend of her brother who was 18. She was 15. She came to me and asked if they could "go together", basically be boyfriend and girlfriend. We discussed and I said yes. I also spoke to him and said that once she turned 16 anything was up to her, prior to that I'd break both his legs.
Now they didn't wait til she was 16 but they were together for nearly 3 years.
Should I call the cops? I'm not going to. That was 8 years ago and in the context of a relationship. I watched them together and had no fears about a power imbalance or her being taken advantage of. In this case in my mind her birthday was an arbitrary date, but to the letter of the law................ |
I'd do the same as you,
Wokko used a 40 year old and a 14 year old as example, and that's outrageous
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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To be fair I think that was actually me.
That's a fair point about your daughter, Stui, and this is perhaps where the law could do with a little more nuance. Perhaps we could at least have a clause where, if a court case is brought in a situation like that, the defendant can claim 'no exploitation' and, if they make a solid case that the relationship/encounter wasn't exploitative, they therefore avoid a guilty finding. That would mean that a great deal of relationships like your daughter's wouldn't result in conviction, whereas the vast majority of cases of a substantially older adult and under-16 year old would (with exceptions, perhaps, where it could somehow be assessed that the relationship was absolutely consensual and caused no harm - a tricky thing to establish in the short-term).
Wokko, I didn't realise we had a different term here - are you sure that's always the case? Either way, the term 'carnal knowledge' is pretty silly as it's more or less an old-fashioned way of saying 'having had sex with someone'. I like my 'sexual exploitation of a minor' term because it a) captures the exact nature of the offence and b) perhaps allows for a defence in cases where it's justified.
TP, one thing to keep in mind is that age of consent is not the same as saying under-16s can't legally have sex at all. They're permitted to so long as it's with someone within their own age group (i.e. <2 years age difference). So it's not so much that they're not judged capable of having sex per se, just that they need to be protected from predatory older teenagers and adults. And that's where I agree with your description of lovestruck teenagers - there's just far too much capacity for manipulation there.
Yes, there are power imbalances in many adult relationships. Maybe, in extreme cases, they should be prosecutable too. But, at the end of the day, a junior high schooler in our society is neither intellectually nor situational equipped to be getting into an adult relationship. They need to be focusing on school and developing connections with people their own age. An adult relationship would rob them of that. And a casual sexual encounter in many cases would be most likely about the adult's sexual and emotional desires more than the junior partner's. That's the moral of Lolita, isn't it? If you don't at least have the capacity to bring the law in in such cases, there's really no recourse for teens who wind up in that situation.
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
Wokka is correct about statutory rape being a US term that isn't used legally here. I'm not 100% sure what the term here is but carnal knowledge rings a bell.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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| think positive wrote: |
I'd do the same as you,
Wokko used a 40 year old and a 14 year old as example, and that's outrageous |
David did, I was answering him. |
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