Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet stages an old Italian tale of an attempt to arrange the marriage of 13-year-old Juliet, who instead falls in love with Romeo. The ensuing conflict with a family member and the disappointed suitor results in three homicides and the suicides of both the young lovers.
In the 1981 Brooke Shields vehicle Endless Love, permissive parents allow their 15-year-old daughter to have a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old boy until the girl's father insists on a cooling-off period. The boy burns the family's home, gets committed to a mental hospital, but re-enters the girl's life upon release. The father intervenes but gets run over and killed; the boy gets sent to prison.
If you want to see a real horror film, forget monster movies and watch Thirteen, the nightmarish 2003 saga of a single mother whose seventh-grader gets involved in promiscuous sex and drug use.
Families in many early civilized societies dealt with the onset of puberty in their female children by arranging marriages for them with acceptable males, to channel their daughters' newfound sexuality into safe conventional behavior; but almost all modern societies have now ceded mate selection to romance.
However, there is a disconnect in modern societies between the age of majority -- at which age parents are no longer legally responsible for their children and can no longer legally control them -- and the age of sexual maturity, for which nature sets an earlier date. In fact, the average age of menarche in the United States is about 12 years and 8 months.
What happens during the five-to-six-year gap between sexual and legal maturity?
Endless Love explored condoning teenage sex in the context of romantic love, while Thirteen portrayed the newer phenomenon of unromantic, promiscuous teen sex. In either case, the risks of venereal disease, pregnancy, and obsession are real.
What tools do parents and society have to make the current system work?
A good upbringing is surely a help, but sex education in the schools at an early enough age could help also (there is contrary opinion on the effect of sex ed -- see UPDATE below). Given that conservative Christians often oppose such programs, it is both ironic and tragic that the recently murdered parents were both highly religious and home-schooled their daughter, just as the murderer was home-schooled by his religious parents.
Statutory rape laws have long been considered a deterrent to males, but their provisions -- as to the age of consent and the age gaps for different punishments -- vary widely and are generally unknown to the people who are supposed to obey them. It's not only male (and female) ignorance of the law that causes its violation, however. Young female "victims" often welcome sex with young and older men, because of raging hormones, curiosity about their new potential, and desire for the trappings of an adult life. See "Can Statutory Rape Laws Be Effective in Preventing Adolescent Pregnancy?" from the Guttmacher Institute for a good information piece. It is interesting to note that the first English law set the age of consent at 12 but later lowered it to 10, at which level it was imported into America, where it was gradually raised by the states to levels currently varying from 14 to 18, with an average of 16. A larger age gap between perpetrator and victim is typically punished more severely, yet a small age gap is often overlooked or is simply not illegal at all. For example, under current Tennessee law (amended in 2006):
39-13-506. Statutory rape. —
(a) Mitigated statutory rape is the unlawful sexual penetration of a victim by the defendant, or of the defendant by the victim when the victim is at least fifteen (15) but less than eighteen (18) years of age and the defendant is at least four (4) but not more than five (5) years older than the victim.
(b) Statutory rape is the unlawful sexual penetration of a victim by the defendant or of the defendant by the victim when:
(1) The victim is at least thirteen (13) but less than fifteen (15) years of age and the defendant is at least four (4) years older than the victim; or
(2) The victim is at least fifteen (15) but less than eighteen (18) years of age and the defendant is more than five (5) years older than the victim.
(c) Aggravated statutory rape is the unlawful sexual penetration of a victim by the defendant, or of the defendant by the victim when the victim is at least thirteen (13) but less than eighteen (18) years of age and the defendant is at least ten (10) years older than the victim.
(d) (1) Mitigated statutory rape is a Class E felony.
(2) Statutory rape is a Class E felony.
(3) Aggravated statutory rape is a Class D felony.
[Acts 1989, ch. 591, § 1; 1990, ch. 980, § 4; 1994, ch. 719, § 1; 2005, ch. 487, § 4; 2006, ch. 890, § 5.]
Under this provision, it appears a male or female teen 13 years old could have sex with a person no more than 16 years of age, one 14 with one no more than 17, one 15 with one no more than 20, one 16 with one no more than 21, and one 17 with one no more than 22, all without being a victim of statutory rape and without his or her partner being a perpetrator.
The new offense of mitigated statutory rape was added to prevent college-age persons from being required to register as sex offenders, when one partner is 15 and the other is 19 or 20, or one partner is 16 and the other is 20 or 21, or one partner is 17 and the other is 21 or 22.
The new offense of aggravated statutory rape was added to punish a 10-year or more age gap more severely.
An age gap law like this one may offer protection against seduction by (or of) an older "predator," but prosecutors know statutory rape cases can be hard to prove because of unwillingness of the "victim" to testify, lack of other witnesses to the act, and lack of physical evidence unless pregnancy results. Moreover, such a law gives no parental or social control over willing teen "victims" when their lovers are within the safe age range.
An alternative means to stop a legal teenage affair could be a delinquency petition filed against one or both of the juveniles, which could result in anything from a warning to a treatment program to reform school. Again for example, Tennessee statutes currently provide:
The petition may be made by any person, including a law enforcement officer, who has knowledge of the facts alleged or is informed and believes that they are true.
The petition shall be verified and may be on information and belief. It shall set forth plainly:
(1) The facts that bring the child within the jurisdiction of the court with a statement that it is in the best interest of the child and the public that the proceeding be brought and, if delinquency or unruly conduct is alleged, that the child is in need of treatment or rehabilitation;
(2) The name, age and residence address, if any, of the child on whose behalf the petition is brought;
(3) The names and residence addresses, if known to petitioner, of the parents, guardian or custodian of the child and of the child's spouse, if any; and
(4) If the child is in custody and, if so, the place of detention and the time the child was taken into custody.
A milder form of this sanction could be to require an overly sexual child -- upon request of a parent -- to attend a program discouraging teen sex, warning of sterner sanctions possible, and encouraging harmony with and obedience to the parents obliged to support them.
Lest you think I'm an alarmist about this subject, I could introduce you to several parents who wish very much they had had more control over this perennial but worsening problem. We live in an era when both parents are often at work while their latch-key kids watch exploitative television programs filled with all varieties of sex scenes -- and sometimes act out on them.
We could rethink our latter-day, compulsory education-driven age of maturity, centered around graduation from high school and the age of 18, and create more options for emancipation of minors, like earlier marriage, alternative schools, and apprenticeship programs.
The problem of teenage sex coming into conflict with parental aspirations and obligations has been thrust to the forefront in the news lately. That creates an opportunity for some fresh thinking about solutions.
UPDATE: Cal Thomas has a new column on teen sex, with strong advice for parents.
UPDATE: See what the kids are up to in "The Cuddle Puddle of Stuyvesant High School."
UPDATE: "Explicit ranking of high school girls sparks outrage."
UPDATE: "Oral and anal sex increasing among teens" and "Study Finds Link Between Media, Sexually Active Teens."
UPDATE: UK Daily Mail: Teenage girls are 'out of control'; ABC News Poll: Sex Lives of American Teens; the complete poll in .pdf format.
UPDATE: See a clip from a "smut-filled episode" of the teen drama Without a Trace that the FCC fined CBS $3.3 million for.
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