Well yeah there you go, Tatchell has been known to advocate for some not-okay things.
Jesus Christ just actually read it, as much as he can try deny itâŚthat sounds like advocation to me.
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Maybe? Shit.
For a Romeo and Juliet type law, I donât think itâs beyond the realm of possibility but still feels a bit low hence the maybe.
More based on the fact at school everyone was doing it then anyway so 14-16, 15-17 etc I think needs more nuance than currently allowed by law. As if thereâs some magic pill you swallow on your 16th birthday and get all these new powers.
Odd picture you want to paint based on what I said tbh
We donât really have that in Maryland. There are sex offense loopholes based around the age of each party though which I guess serve the same purpose. I screened a few of those cases.
I also had the absolute displeasure of prosecuting a case involving a guy with developmental issues who was in his 20s carrying on a sexual relationship with a 14 year old with her motherâs consent. It was very strange. They rolled into court wearing matching dog collars.
Thatâs where I think itâs hard, you have to have age limits and generally I think 16 is fine as a baseline, but I donât think the hard and fast rules are always fair.
It shouldnât actually come down just to age as much as it should mental capability and maturity, but how do you judge that fairly in a court room? Where would you draw the line? You simply canât determine.
I donât even know what to say about your scenario, on the ages it sounds terrible and wrong, I donât think you could justify it despite the circumstances, but it does seem harsh to have his life ruined for that. What/who landed them in court, can you say? Usually wouldâve thought the parents but seems not here.
Problem is itâs such sensitive ground thereâs no purely right answer and better to be safe.
Long story short, DSS was involved with the young womanâs family. Mom had some issues going on. During their supervision of the family they learned that the young woman (a girl, really) was having sex with this man in his 20s. They referred it to the cops since she was a minor and he was a full grown man.
He came to court with no attorney and asked for a trial and wanted to represent himself. He apologized to the court for having sex with her and was found guilty.
The judge tried to give him a probationary disposition (which is not a guilty finding) but it requires someone to waive their right to appeal. He wouldnât do that so the judge found him guilty instead and he was officially a registered sex offender.
I spent years going back and forth with an attorney who was later hired to represent him about a way to resolve the case in a equitable fashion.
We wound up agreeing to have him come back and accept a probationary disposition but then he moved to another state which didnât recognize Marylandâs probationary disposition and treated him as a âregularâ sex offender requiring mandatory lifetime registration.
And as the motions and appeals wore on, it became more and more apparent that this guy had developmental issues which I didnât catch and the judge didnât catch the first time around at the initial trial. He could dress himself, read and write and hold a conversation but I think if you stacked him up next to your average 23 year old itâs not like he was âimmatureâ for his age in the way that some people talk about young men, I think there was something about his brain development that fell outside the normal bell curve.
The last I heard he was still living out of state in a rural area with his extended family and registering as a sex offender. It was one of the worst thing Iâve ever been a part of. Everyone felt gross.
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Damn man thatâs such a difficult situation, thanks for explaining. Can only imagine how everyone involved felt, got a sense just reading it.
Some element of hope in there as well though, in that people did try to understand the situation and it couldâve resulted in a more appropriate sentence.
Yeah, that was a pretty unusual situation. I cannot emphasize enough how much I hated handling those cases. Some people absolutely love them.
Oh.
There is more than meets the eye.
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So given Germanyâs age of consent is 14, are they pedophile advocates? 
Anything lower than 16 is problematic for me and borders on pedophilia.
Just because a country has a legal low age of consent doesnât make it right. A 14 year old is still so young in her/his developmental phase that she/he is easily manipulated and taking advantage of. Iâd say 16 as well, albeit less than 14.
If youâre - letâs say a 30 year old adult and think itâs okay to date and have sex with a 14 year old then for me youâre not ok. Donât care about the legal age of consent set by mainly men in different times (where other stuff was acceptable and legal, which isnât anymore).
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It boils down to the morals and ethics of the man; my niece is going to 14 and you can blatantly tell that she is still a child that can easily be manipulated.
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I could live with lowering the age of consent to 14 if that age of consent only applied to people who were like 16 or younger. Cos lets face it, many teens are having sex and a 16 year old shagging a 15 year old shouldnât be prosecuted as if theyâre an actual nonce (Iâm sure 16 year olds getting prosecuted for such things happens rarely, if at all, tbf)
But any adult having sex with any 14 year old is exploiting a child, simple as in my view.
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I agree that a 16 year old together with a 14 year old is different from a grown ass adult of 30 with a 14 year old. There lies my problem with the legal age of consent.
If a country adjusts it to 16 year olds dating 14 year olds and not being prosecuted for it, I am okay with that. But I am not okay with an adult dating and having sex with a 14 year old. Because it indeed is exploiting a child.
Precisely, at 14 she is still a child. So, just because it is legal in a country, doesnât make it right in my opinion.
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Itâs a bit strange that Peter Tatchell was so concerned about getting the age of consent reduced?
Is sixteen not young enough for him?
I think itâs more that if a country sets a reasonable albeit arbitrary age and then you seek to lower it, Iâd seriously question the motive. Comes off highly weird.
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Well while working for a council child services, there was a 12yr boy that was having sex with 30 gay men a week and we couldnât do anything because he didnât want to dog them out.
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Someone in my family got done for this at 17 with his gf of 15. He didnât go to jail or anything but he had to go to paedo rehab classes with proper kiddy fiddlers and on the register for however many years which affected his career possibilities. I think there were flaws in the case proceedings and he wasnât meant to have been dealt with like that but it can happen.
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