By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Staff Writer
You’d think it would be a simple thing, protecting children from adults who prey on their innocence.
But we’re making this way too complicated.
There were 14 bills introduced this legislative session on raising the age at which a minor can legally agree to have sex. The current age is 14. Some would raise the age to 16, others to 18. Some provide for differences in ages so that a teen cannot give consent to have sex with an adult four or more years older. Others provide for a five-year difference.
Here’s what’s complicated:
Raising the age of consent could criminalize teenage sexual exploration. It would require additional programs and training for police, counselors and others in the criminal justice system. It could put teenage girls through the traumatic process of testifying against her beloved. It might jeopardize teens’ access to reproductive health services. And, as one ill-advised lawmaker was quoted as saying, sometimes it’s hard to tell how old a teenage girl really is. A guy could get in trouble.
But that’s just chaff. Here’s what’s simple: Adult men should not have the right to have sex with young girls.
We as a society agree that a 14- year-old is too young to be trusted behind the wheel of a car. We agree that a 15-year-old is too young to drink. We agree that a 16-year-old is too young to vote. How on earth then can these children be mature enough to make the decision to give their bodies to an adult?
Raising the age of consent wouldn’t mean a 15-year-old girl could get arrested for having sex with a 35-year-old man. It’s not about criminalizing her behavior. It criminalizes his actions. It’s about telling these guys to keep their hands off children.
Some would have you believe that this sort of thing rarely happens. I disagree. I disagree from personal experience. I was once 14 and I heard it all from men old enough to be my father and old enough to know better.
There are bad men, weak men, predatory men who cruise the malls and the streets and the beaches looking for a pretty young thing to sweet-talk and sweep up. And they’ll say anything and they know how to play it.
That is just wrong. And unless the age of consent is raised, we as a society are saying it's perfectly legal. Moreover, we’re saying it’s acceptable.
Don’t believe me that it happens? Ask your daughter, ask your niece, ask the girl next door. Ask her what happens when she's dressed up, out with friends, out of your sight. Ask her if men ever come on to her. Prepare for the answer.
Should something like this be decided by parents? Sure. But what parents are going to approve of their teen having sex with an adult?
Raising the age of consent gives parents a tool to use in exercising their right to protect their kid. When a 14-year-old girl is seduced by a grown man, her father can pick up the phone and call the police. Right now, all daddy can do is go to the guy’s house with a shotgun. And nobody wants that.
Even more important, it sends a strong message of prevention. It says to adults: Don’t mess with kids.
Which bill to support? They’re all lacking in one way or another. Raising the age to 16 seems a reasonable compromise. So does allowing for the inevitable relationships that happen between mid-teens and partners just a few years older. There’s still time in the legislative session to pick one and fix it in committee, take testimony from the experts, address all concerns so that teenage sex isn’t criminalized and reproductive health services aren’t jeopardized and kids get counseling and support and all that stuff. Fix it and get on with it.
This should be simple.
Lee Cataluna’s column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Her e-mail is lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.
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