Dude, She's 13

Sarah insists I write more often. So I'm going to piggyback her "trendiest things of 2007" post with one of my own. The trend at issue: rallying around older teenage guys who commit statutory rape as though they're folk heroes.

Case in point: Is Ricky really a sex offender?

When Ricky was 16, he went to a teen club and met a girl named Amanda, who said she was the same age. They hit it off and were eventually having sex. At the time Ricky thought it was a pretty normal high school romance.

Two years later, Ricky is a registered sex offender, and his life is destroyed.

Amanda turned out to be 13. Ricky was arrested, tried as an adult, and pleaded guilty to the charge of lascivious acts with a child, which is a class D felony in Iowa.

So, Sophomore or Junior in high school goes to a club and talks a seventh-grader into having sex with him. Hell yes, he's a sex offender.

The more publicized case last year was Genarlow Wilson, a seventeen-year-old football player who got caught on tape having sex with a semi-conscious girl his age and getting a blowjob (call it what it is, folks) from a fifteen-year-old. Georgia's age of consent is sixteen (I know, I was shocked they had one, too). A jury acquitted Wilson on the rape charge, which isn't all that surprising since he probably played the ever-present "slut card" to claim consent. Six other guys who got caught doing the same thing plead to lesser charges and got five-year prison terms with ten years' probation. Wilson decided to roll the dice, and now he's doing the statutory minimum of ten years in prison.

High-school football star and his buddies invite some underage girls over, get them drunk, have sex with some and get head from others. Again, sex offenders? Yes.

Yet with the kind of media coverage they get, you'd think that these guys were prisoners of the Gestapo. Their parents insist that their little angels were just being teenagers, that they shouldn't be held to an adult standard of any kind.

But when an older person is relating to a younger person, who is supposed to be the adult? We have two alternatives: we either establish a standard of behavior for older teenagers, male and female, with younger teenagers, or we never let teenagers out of our sights. The latter isn't going to happen.

The blunt fact is this: if you're a high school male, and you have sex with a middle-school girl, you have taken advantage of her. I knew more than a few such guys when I was in high school, and I never knew a single situation where the male wasn't using pressure or flat-out coercion to get what he wanted. I certainly never knew anyone who was innocent when they had sex with someone three or four years their junior.

And the one that always kills me is the card Ricky played: "I didn't know she was 13, man!" Twenty-year-old guys play this card a lot with 16 and 17-year-old girls. Frankly, they have a better argument. I've never seen a 13-year-old girl who actually looked or, more importantly, acted like she was 16 or 17, especially not one at a "teen club." If any such girls exist, they're probably at home studying or -- God forbid -- spending time with their parents, who actually give a damn whether they're playing wide receiver for the local quarterback.

Bottom line, folks: these are the worst examples of excuse-making for irresponsible teens and young adults that I've seen. And such stories are getting more and more common. Those of us who believe in moral standards and personal responsibility need to make sure our voices are heard in the discussion. Otherwise, the very legal barriers that protect impressionable younger teens from coercive pressure by older teens may break down altogether, as they've started to in Europe.

Have a nice day.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and just so folks know, I have "moderated comments" turned on. So if your comment doesn't go through right away, that's why.