"Eric Johnson is Republican president pro tem of the Georgia Senate. He admits that age limits are arbitrary, but says that they have to be set somewhere…"
When are kids too young to have consensual sex? 15? 14?... 13? States all across the country set different legal ages for consensual sex. In Georgia, the law is currently set at 16. A recent case there involving a 17-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl has attracted a lot of national criticism. Youth Radio’s Alix Black reports on how the case hits close to home for a lot of young people.
Most teens I know are happy with last week’s Georgia State Supreme Court ruling to release Genarlow Wilson from prison. Wilson was convicted of “aggravated child molestation” for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was just 17 years old. And because sexual and romantic relationships with people in other grades are commonplace in high school, a lot of teenagers could identify with his case.
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I asked my friend Alix Joslyn, who is a high school senior in Atlanta, what she thinks about Genarlow Wilson having been prosecuted as a sex offender.
JOSLYN (On Tape)
I just think that it’s one of the most absurd things in the world.
ALIX
I asked Alix because a few years ago, Alix herself had been a 15 year-old dating an 18-year-old guy at her high school. Alix doesn’t think that Wilson’s sexual partner was a victim…
JOSLYN (On Tape)
It’s not like she hadn’t consented to this. It’s not like he took advantage of her. And it’s not like she was young enough to not understand what she was doing. You know they were both young…and it’s ridiculous to think he is in any way a criminal at all.
ALIX A lot of kids I’ve talked to say they discuss these issues before making a move. Many of my friends actually turn to their parents when they begin dating with an age gap. Atlanta teen Ben Williams was 17, when he and his 15-year-old girlfriend Emma asked her parents for advice.
BEN (On Tape)
We talked about the legal issues with her parents and they said that they didn’t have a problem with it and as long as we didn’t there really weren’t any issues.
PROFESSOR (On Tape)
And generally, that’s true.
ALIX
That’s Franklyn Zimring, the Simon Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley.
PROFESSOR (On Tape)
…The question is, who else knows about it? If a teacher knows about it, if somebody gets pregnant, if somebody tells a girlfriend who tells somebody else… And the other problem is sometimes parents change their minds. And one wonderful way of breaking up a couple is to send the boy to jail.
ALIX
Many of my peers complain that legal age limits seem to be randomly assigned. Eric Johnson is Republican president pro tem of the Georgia Senate. He admits that age limits are arbitrary, but says that they have to be set somewhere…
SENATOR (On Tape)
Some 13-year olds may be perfectly capable of driving a car and some 40 year-olds probably ought to be banned from the roads, but we can’t do that when we create laws. We have to establish at what point is the community standard for making certain decisions.
ALIX
Senator Johnson says laws need to apply to everyone. Age of consent statutes are designed to protect those who are physically but not emotionally ready for sex, from being manipulated by people who are older and more experienced.
SENATOR (On Tape)
A young female may feel, well, if I want this football player to be my boyfriend I’m gonna have to do something to keep him. She may not have the ability to make that informed decision of what the risks are of having sex, what the long-term effect on her psyche is…
ALIX
But perhaps the biggest danger of underage sex is the legal repercussions if someone decides to press charges. Professor Zimring says the good news for teens, is that prosecutors and parents often exercise discretion before using what he calls the “Atomic weapons of the criminal law.”
PROFESSOR (On Tape)
The bad news is, that the kids that do get hauled in, it’s a little like losing the lottery. It isn’t even that this is an even-handed or principled legal approach. It’s just that they got unlucky.
ALIX
Genarlow Wilson spent more than two years in jail before the state reviewed his case and released him. If prosecuted under Georgia’s new “Romeo & Juliet law”, Wilson’s crime would have been classified as a misdemeanor, punishable by only a year in jail – not the mandatory ten years he received. And although the new law doesn’t apply retroactively, the Georgia Supreme Court signaled that it did influence their decision in Genarlow Wilson’s case.
A lot of young people I know, like Ben Williams, are excited the laws are finally reflecting the realities of teen sex...
BEN (On Tape)
Definitely modern teenagers are in a world where they’re brought up with sexuality and relationships that have changed and if times have changed then I guess the law should change also.
Jailed for Teen Oral Sex, Now Ordered Free