Selective Prosecution of Males in Underage Sex Cases?
A 14-year-old Massachusetts boy has been charged with various sex crimes for his involvement in sexual game-playing with three girls aged 12 and 11. Although he too is a minor, the state declined to charge the girls with any wrongdoing.
Strange as it may seem to say, that type of sexual behavior among children that young is not all that unusual these days.
Where the plot thickens, though is that his attorney moved the court for an order requiring the state to produce documents showing that its prosecution of the boy was not sexually motivated. That is, he's claiming that the state discriminates against boys in its decisions about prosecution in sex cases involving minors. The state vociferously objected to the defense motion, but the trial court ruled for the boy and the Supreme Judicial Court agreed.
Now, according to this article in the Boston Globe, the defense has received the documents and is preparing a motion to dismiss all charges against the boy, presumably based on discriminatory prosecution (The Boston Globe, 2/6/09).
I'm no authority on the laws of Massachusetts, but I suspect that he still has a long way to go to get these charges dismissed. Among other things, he'll probably have to show the court that, even if the documents show the state discriminates against males, his prosecution was a direct result of that discrimination. The state's failure to prosecute the girls for participating in the very activities he's charged with may give him an ace in the hole on that issue.
Stay tuned. Whether this boy gets his charges dismissed or not, these documents may tell us a lot about whether the State of Massachusetts is stuck in the bad old days when only males could be charged with sex crimes regarding minors.
In the meantime, it's refreshing to read statements that make sense on this issue. For example, I've always wondered how it is that, when two minors engage in sex, both are perpetrators of statutory rape and both are victims of the same crime. Presumably, both could be convicted and sent to prison and, at the same time, petition the state's crime victim's compensation fund for recompense. So when the defendant's attorney, Janice Bassill, says "People should be treated the same way under the law. You can't be a perpetrator and a victim too," it has the ring of simple sense.
And let's hear a cheer for someone who actually understands the concept of gender equality. Sarah Wunsch, attorney for the ACLU's Women's Rights Project and Reproductive Freedom Project, which filed a brief in support of the defendant, is one who gets it.
“We should not be enforcing the law based on stereotypical notions about girls as not being capable actors in the same way that boys are,’’ Wunsch said. “They are doing what teenagers are doing today -- they are fooling around sexually and the girls are participants in the same way that boys are.’’
Think about it; we could treat girls, not as a special group of helpless, ever-aggrieved victims, but as they are - individuals whose actions should be judged, for good or ill, according to their merits of demerits. And if we can treat girls that way, maybe we could do the same toward women.
As Molly Ivins once said, "It's a concept."
| More from Robert Franklin
Stumble It!
