Adult men’s statutory rapes of minor girls: confounding truths
In a previous blog, I wrote about how it might – just might – be appropriate for the law to view sex between adult women and minor boys as less criminally serious than that between adult men and minor girls. The biological differences I pointed to were the one-sided nature of pregnancy and childbirth and the truth that sexual intercourse is almost invariably extremely pleasurable for males and MAY be painful, and even agonizing, for females.
Now I would like to deal with confounding and confusing aspects of the statutory rape laws as they concern adult men and minor girls.
A man named Tom Green was convicted of the statutory rape of a girl when she was 13 ½ years old. He had impregnated her and she had given birth to their child.
At the time of his conviction, the victim was 30 years old. She was also in the courtroom when the verdict was read.
One might expect her to have been delighted to hear the pronouncement of “guilty†or at least to have experienced satisfaction at learning that this crime against her was finally being avenged by society.
Not quite.
In fact, not at all.
When the verdict was read, the woman who was legally Tom Green’s victim, Linda Kunz (who called herself Linda Kunz Green), burst into tears. She complained bitterly to reporters, “This is so unfair! It was ME that fell in love. It was ME that wanted to get married.â€
The situation of Tom Green and Linda is complicated by Tom’s being a polygynist. He had made several public appearances with his five “wives,†of whom Linda was one, and he had previously been convicted of bigamy.
However, leaving the issue of simultaneous multiple marriage aside, a look at the Tom and Linda relationship is useful in discussing the complications that can attend the statutory rapes of minor girls by adult men.
Linda has always insisted that, as a 13-year-old girl, she actively pursued the relationship with Tom Green and sought to “marry†him according to the tenets of their religious faith. After his convictions for bigamy and for raping her, Linda put up a website in which she vociferously defended him. She argued that, if she had been truly raped, she would have escaped from her rapist at the first opportunity. Instead, she had willingly remained with Tom Green all through her teen years and well into her adulthood.
In another case, two Muslim emigrants to the United States were arrested and charged with statutory rape. Although Islam allows polygyny, it wasn’t at issue in these cases. Both men were married monogamously. Each man’s wife was under the legal age of consent in the state of the United States in which they resided. In both cases, the girls who were legally alleged to be statutory rape victims opposed the prosecutions.
There have been several instances of teen girls who weren’t “married†in any sense to the adult men with whom they had had sex opposing the prosecutions. In some cases, the men have been jailed or imprisoned for statutory rape, been released, and then wed the victim who had reach adulthood during his incarceration (much as the infamous Mary Kay Letourneau married male victim Vili Fualaau when she got out of prison).
Why do some minor girls react negatively to the prosecution of adult men with whom they have had sex?
To understand this, we have to take a step back and consider the connotations of the word “rape.†With reason, a sense of horror attaches to this term. It carries the suggestion of brutality, violence, and terror.
The victims here under discussion suffered none of the above. They participated willingly in sex. They may even have initiated the sex. However, they were legally unable to consent to sex, making them victims and the men who had sex with them rapists.
I believe that there is a common paradigm of adult male-minor sexual relationships and that the statutory rape laws were, in large part, designed to deal with that paradigm. The model to which I refer is that of a predatory and exploitive grown man. He deceives and makes false promises. He often targets a teen girl who is especially vulnerable: a girl who is unattractive, unpopular, self-conscious, and/or shy. The man gives her the attention and compliments that she craves. Then he attempts to have sexual intercourse with her. The girl submits to his wishes out of gratitude or to continue the relationship he threatens to end unless she has sex. She endures, rather than enjoys, the sexual act. Soon the adult man is gone and the teen girl has abandoned is pregnant.
The above paradigm became a paradigm because it is rooted in reality. There ARE adult men who blithely and callously enjoy sex with minor girls, frequently impregnating them and just as frequently abandoning the pregnant teens.
However, the above is not what happens in EVERY case in which a grown man has sexual contact with a minor female.
This point was ironically underlined n the 1964 movie, “The Night of the Iguana.†In that film, Richard Burton’s character is asked to define “statutory rape.†The character answers, “When an older man is seduced by a young girl.†I laughed at this description: when the MAN is seduced. Such reversal seemed funny – like the idea of a woman physically abusing a man. (However, I now realize that men ARE in fact physically abused by women.)
Cases of male-on-female statutory rape include a wide variety of circumstances such as girls who are eager to grow up and lie about their ages, girls who consider themselves married to the men, and girls who are curious and want to experience sex.
The adult man who has sex with a minor girl commits what is legally a serious offense. Regardless of the circumstances, he may lose his freedom. In jail or prison, if he is not a tough sort of man, he may himself be FORCIBLY raped. When is regains his freedom, he must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and that greatly restricts both his work opportunities and possible places of residence. In the case of those who marry or cohabit with their former victims who have grown to adulthood, there is an irony in that the female he legally victimized shares the troubles caused by the constraints on where he may reside.
There is an old saying that “hard cases make bad law.†However, an understanding of the range of usual cases is necessary to craft good law.
I admit that I don’t really know exactly what form our laws on adult-minor sex should take. I do know that adult men who violate the statutory rape laws with minor girls are not necessarily monsters. They may not even be rogues. And their punishments can be grossly disproportionate to their crimes.
| More from Denise Noe
Stumble It!
August 29th, 2008 at 12:49 am
THE CRUX OF THE PROBLEM ARE THE LAW MAKERS WHO PASS LAWS WITHOUT EXPERT ADVISE
It is my educated opinion, and that of the experts, that sex offender laws as they are written today,“Do More Harm than Good.†These laws actually endanger children and society.
Megans Law and the Residence restrictions do not protect the children as these regulations intended. They actually make matters worse by creating itinerant predators.
Let me explain,
Incest and friends of the family make up approximately 98% of all sex offenses. There has been estimated that 60 million individuals in this country that has experienced child sexual abuse. 50%, 30 million will go on to abuse a child. This is the crux of the problem, and we are NOT addressing it.
Instead, law makers are creating laws that Do More harm than good. For example,
The public registries. 98% of those come from the family and friends of the family. It is a fact, that once caught, that 95% of them NEVER EVER repeat another sex crime. And that without therapy.
The remaining 5% are HIDING in the registries. Those who DID NOT know their victims, the VIOLENT rapists and the REPEAT offender.
AND, approximately, 95% of all new sex offenses are committed by individuals NOT on the registries. Is it no wonder, because law makers have totally ignored the fact that Incest and friends of the family are the crux of the problem. There are 30 million abusers out there and lawmakers have done NOTHING to address PREVENTION through EDUCATION.
By ignoring incest and friends of the family, law makers have created a GREATER RISK to children and society. If we do not openly discuss it, do not propose any educational models to better inform ourselves and keep ourselves afflicted with guilt and shame which washes over all concerned, perpetrators, victims, and other family members alike, we all help shield and perpetuate the crime.
These sex offender laws are being passed without advice of the EXPERTS. They are knee jerk regulatory reaction which is just another way of saying, additional punishment is justified. Congress and the house have ignored the experts in the field. But when it comes to light bulbs, they clamor for expert testimony. There is something very fundamentally wrong with their approach when it comes to sex offender laws.
Randy Lopp, treatment subcommittee chairman of the Oklahoma Sex Offender Management Team said,”Most people who know anything about this are frustrated. It is just not helpful — the laws as they are now,”
”I think if the general public understood the RESEARCH, they would be willing to back the legislators to change the laws to make more sense and to protect children, because the laws as they are written are not protecting children,” he said. “They are doing more harm than good.”
Our own
US Department of Justice, 2003
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/rsorp9...
• Sample size – 9,700 sex offenders
• Length of time – 3 years
• Re-offense trigger – reconviction (Doesn’t mean a new sex crime)
• Results – 5.3% sexual offence. 3.3% child molestation.
Arizona, Department of Corrections, 2006
http://www.azcorrections.gov/FACTSHEETS/Fact%...
• Length of time – Ten years
• Sample size – 2,444 sex offenders
• Results – 3.2% returned for a new felony sex offense, 1.4% returned for a new felony case of child molestation
• Reoffense trigger – new conviction (Any conviction)
And there are many more studies and they have the same results. LOW recidivism rates for first time sex offenses.
Law makers pass these laws as non-controversial . Without debate and there is nothing I can think of that is more controversial.
Constitutional rights are being side stepped and it has been said that when you deny the constitution to one, you deny it to EVERYONE.
Please, look at the REAL problem. Incest and friends of the family and Prevent through education. Do away with these draconian laws that protect no one but endangers every child.
http://www.cfcoklahoma.org
August 29th, 2008 at 4:30 am
Buuuut, when the man “knocks her up” and LEAVES not only will their be no investigation of a crime, but the girl is rewarded with free assistance–as evidenced by the fact that 13y/o girls can go on welfare.
So, when the man “does the right thing” and stays to raise the child the law decides to go after him.
When the man no longer remains, the girl is rewarded.
Can there be any clearer picture of “kick dad to the curb” policy from big daddy government.
August 30th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Thank you Denise, for a sound look at aspects of a difficult issue. And for indicating that personal realisation – the ‘Night of the Iguana’ one.
That itself indicates a typical problem of the sort of disregard that is experienced by men when they state a truth. You didn’t decribe the kind of laugh you made but I can imagine many similar reactions by women to that particular ’script writer’s line’, ranging from simple disbelief, assumption that he was being insolent, total affront, incredulity, etc. All driven by an underlying prejudice.
You put the issue in relief by indicating a large age gap, but of course the defining feature is the girl’s age not the man’s. He could be just a few years older – running right into the jaws of that other feminine/feminist mantra about girls maturing so much earlier than boys. A precociously mature 15 y/o girl who initiates and controls a sexual encounter can it seems be raped by an immature 17 y/o boy who hasn’t the skills (nor perhaps inclination) to extricate himself from her engineered situation.
And underpinning all such instances is the assumption that you retain and profer that a girl ‘goes along’ with sex, not because she has a lust-drive of her own but merely to keep a ‘relationship’ and its attendant attention. Only his lust-drive is acknowleged – racheted up of course, in direct opposite to her’s being denied out of the courtroom door. ‘Going along with it’ is almost expected of her – and her excuse. No one thinks about a boy ‘going along with it’ because of similar expectations loaded onto him. They are discounted. He has to be seen as an initiator and a driver, even when following the script laid down by those very people who like a good self-fulfilling prophesy.
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:57 am
Denise Noe’
Your story touches a delicate subject of “statutory rape”
and age differences in different cultures and states.
NBC Dateline has bone on with law enforcement officers on sting operations where they pretend that the person is conversing with underage person
A federal judge sentenced one man to 30 years in prison, 30 years on probation and registering rest of his life as a sex offfender.
Link to part of the story.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00EFDE1439F93BA35752C1A963958260
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:27 am
I believe the claim that preventing pregnancy can be used as a rationale for treating male offenders more severely than female offenders is disingenuous. In my personal opinion sex between an adult and a minor should not be presumed less injurious because the adult is a woman and the minor a boy. Nor should sex between an adult male and a minor female be considered necessarily more injurious than sex between an adult female and a minor male.
These ideological points have also generated constitutional arguments, as gendered statutory rape laws implicate the standards and principles underlying the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Equal Protection argument was featured most prominently in the claims articulated by the petitioner in Michael M. v. Superior Court of Sonoma County, where a male juvenile accused of the statutory rape of a female peer challenged the state’s ability to prosecute him under the then-gendered California statute. Petitioner Michael M. alleged that the California statutory rape law unlawfully discriminated on the basis of gender because, when both the male and female sexual partners were younger than 18, it presumed that the male was the aggressor. This classification, he argued, perpetuated outdated notions of the customary roles of the sexes and reinforced stereotypes of women as helpless and naive and of men as sexual aggressors. Michael further asserted that the state’s purported justification for the statute, teenage pregnancy prevention, was a sham; he claimed that the teenage pregnancy rationale deflected attention from the statute’s actual purpose–to maintain sexual stereotypes.
Giving great deference to the State of California and to the Supreme Court of California in his plurality opinion, Chief Justice Rehnquist accepted as true the stated purpose of the gendered statute: to prevent teenage pregnancy. He then concluded that the State had a “strong interest” in preventing teenage pregnancy and that the interest was “sufficiently related to the State’s objectives to pass Constitutional muster.” In addition, the Court ruled acceptable a gender classification that was “not invidious, but rather realistically reflects the fact that the sexes are not similarly situated in certain circumstances.” The plurality accepted the California Supreme Court’s finding that young men and young women are not similarly situated with respect to the problems and risks of sexual intercourse, because only women can get pregnant and because women suffer the consequences of teenage pregnancy disproportionately to males. Thus, the United States Supreme Court claimed, the gendered statutory rape law did not discriminate on the basis of gender; it simply recognized that men and women are different and treated them as such.
In the years following Michael M.’s release, legal scholars condemned the Court’s decision and lobbied for the repeal of gendered laws. They criticized Chief Justice Rehnquist for “[accepting] the utterly dubious proposition put forward by the State of California that the purpose of the statutory rape statute was to prevent teenage pregnancies[ ].” Critics further argued that statutory rape laws are based on “stereotypes concerning male sexual aggression and female sexual passivity, despite Chief Justice Rehnquist’s express denial of that possibility.” They contended that gender stereotypes animated the Court’s approval of such statutes. For example, in describing the opinion of the lower court, Chief Justice Rehnquist noted that “males alone can physiologically cause the result which the law properly seeks to avoid (i.e. pregnancy)” and that “gender classification was readily justified as a means of identifying the offender and the victim.” According to Wendy Williams, the first statement is based on a sexist biological concept that women are not necessary for conception, but serve only as incubators. The second statement–that criminalizing only men properly identifies perpetrators–implies that only men can be statutory rapists and only women can be victims. (62) Nothing about this construction is inherent in the concept of “sexual intercourse with a minor”; it results only from the statute’s gender-specific terms (the same terms that allegedly violate the Equal Protection Clause).
Overall, scholars have argued that the Court’s decision in Michael M. was not only circular but also dangerous. Williams viewed Michael M. as evidence that society’s quest for gender equality had hit a brick wall of culture, that deeply-embedded cultural notions of what is quintessentially male and female will not yield to constitutional requirements. James McCollum echoed this concept, although he optimistically noted that the Michael M. decision was only a “temporary road block towards alienating unnecessary gender discrimination.” By refusing to acknowledge the sexist implications in gendered statutory rape laws, and by upholding the law in spite of these implications, the Supreme Court implicitly “sanctioned the subtle gender discrimination which exists in our culture.”
September 4th, 2008 at 6:01 am
I have another suggestion, in the interest of a more dialectical approach to the subject, for those who might disagree with my previous post. Why not accept the sexual double standard as the norm? Sex should be acceptable for boys but not for girls because, you guessed it, the girls can get pregnant and the boys cannot. The boys can begin to be sexually active as early as 12. (We should legalized prostitution to this end as well.) The girls should remain virginal until they are married in the interest of preventing teenage pregnancy and children out of wedlock.
Naturally, some will argue that such a double standard has been rendered outmoded owing to advances in contraception. In which case, pregnancy being our only concern, no one will mind older men having sex with a young girls so long as some form of contraception is used or the man’s had a vasectomy. The only thing that should be against the law, if anything, should be the failure to use contraceptive devices.
Note that our society has punished homosexual behavior more so than heterosexual behavior because we are a homophobic society… By rights, there would be no laws governing homosexual behavior if preventing pregnancy was the only concern of the law. Likewise, we punish boys more severely than girls for the same behavior because we are an androphobic society. If we didn’t fear male sexuality as something more predatory than female sexuality, we wouldn’t imprison teenage boys for having sex with teenage girls. If, on the other hand, preventing teenage pregnancy was our only concern, we would jail promiscuous teenage females as well as their teenage boy friends. It takes two to tango. Why only blame the boys? We might as well send a message to the girls as well. Recently, “more liberal” states have decided criminalizing teenage boys for having sex with teenage girls is a bit stupid in light of changing moral standards. These states have made teenage sex a less criminal offense so long as their ages are not too far apart.
Nevertheless, let us assume the bane of pregnancy is largely immaterial to society and a single standard of all permissive sexual freedom shall take its place for men, women, boys, and girls. Let us assume, as the late Norman Mailer so eloquently put it, ” … all hierarchies of moral precedence bombarded, all eschatologies withdrawn … the argument will go beyond that foreseeable future time when monogamy and legitimacy will be gone, when distinctions between heterosexuality will be gone, adolescent sexuality and extramarital sexuality all gone — all part of that huge revolutionary statement that all fucking high or low, by any hole or pit, is pleasure, and pleasure is the first sweetmeat of reason.” As might be expected, Mailer was speaking to the suggestions of the so called “radical” feminist Kate Millett, “A sexual revolution would require, perhaps most of all, an end to traditional sexual inhibitions and taboos, particularly those that threaten patriarchal monogamous marriage: homosexuality, “illegitimacy,” adolescent, pre- and extra-marital sexuality.”
I must say that Kate could sound rather reasonable at times, even if I can’t see an inveterate connection between patriarchy and monogamous marriage. Whatever. The case has been made that all double standards are rooted in archaic fears. One might only suggest that sex between an older woman and a boy is less criminal than sex between an older man and a girl because of woman’s innate fear of man. And that, my dear, is be something that has to be either denied or overcome.