Rites of Passage

Are teenagers increasingly outgrowing the law in sexual matters?
Many adolescents want to have sex before their 16th birthdays but
legally they are not allowed to. Quite clearly, large numbers of
pre-16s think the law is an ass (that is if they even think about the
law at all) and decide to just flout it and get on with the job. So
what stance should the responsible, mature and contemporary adult take
to this ethical question? What are the different implications for a
parent, a legal guardian, a carer or a teacher?

It's worth just dealing with the law for a moment, if nothing else to
set the context for the ethical discussion. Under the law of England,
sex with a person under 16 is always Unlawful Sexual Intercourse
whatever the gender. The more serious cases are prosecuted as rape. But
often the lesser charge of indecent assault is brought because the
Crown, looking for quick (i.e. cheap) prosecutions, is more likely to
get a guilty plea. A lawyer told me recently that in cases where an
older woman is accused of have sex with an underage boy, say 14 or 15,
they rarely go to court because of the "fnar fnar" factor: that is the
male members of the jury taking the view, "Cor, I wish some older woman
had taught me a thing or two when I was that age". Men having sex with
a 14-year-old girl are less likely to get off so lightly.

In the recent case of the 26-year-old biology teacher, Amy Gehring,
cleared of having sex with two underage boys while a supply teacher at
their school in Surrey, the jury seemed to think that in part the boys'
evidence was no more than the fantasy of any hot-blooded hetero
adolescent. Maybe a touch of "fnar fnar" there. That they had tried to
sell their stories to the "red-tops" also counted against them.

A case more pertinent to this discussion was reported last year when a
15-year-old boy dying of cancer said he wanted to have sex with a
woman. His dying wish was granted with a session with a sex worker. He
was said to be very happy, "and only slightly disappointed that it was
over so quickly". Surely he did nobody any harm and he died a happier
person. But that won't satisfy "Indignant of Tunbridge Wells" who would
demand to know what the parents were thinking of when they allowed this
(if indeed they did) and why wasn't the whore busted?

Does it make any difference that the boy was dying? The law says he was
not emotionally or intellectually competent to make such a decision,
but then some children suffering from terminal illnesses often are much
more mature. In this case we don't know, although the boy's response to
the sex seems to have been remarkably grown-up.

Most children who embark on underage consensual sex are not about to
experience death, with the possible exception of le petit mort. Their
competence to decide if they should "do it" can be judged in each
individual case and some may be emotionally mature at the age of 14
while everyone can probably call to mind grown men and women who's
emotional maturity in matters sexual can be called into question. But
the law has to draw a line somewhere in order to protect pre-teens, to
whom no one would want to ascribe competence to decide for
themselves.

If a 14-year-old makes his or her own decision to have sex and suffers
no verifiable physical or emotional ill-effects, then a victimless
crime has been committed. The teenager or the parent(s) have a right to
break the law, and suffer the consequences. In a modern, liberal
society we may accept such a risk as teenagers or parents. But
somewhere there is a line over which no ethical argument should allow
us to step, be it an age limit or a type of sexual activity. Children
must be protected from themselves, their parents and predatory adults.
Ethical principles inform the law which is about the only instrument a
civilised society has for protecting the vulnerable. The law is an ass
in that it cannot apply a competence test in each individual case, but
it's still needed. Fred and Rosemary West demonstrated that in the most
grotesque way possible.

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This artricle was first written as a feature series on ethical matters
about sex for www.getethical.com.