I agree. I think a lot of 14-year-olds (both male and female) think they can handle a relationship with a much older person when in reality they cannot.

I'd be interested, though, to find out how the 14-year-old boys that slept with Debra LaFave and Pamela Rogers Turner are holding up now. It's been a couple of years. I know Mary Kay Letourneau's victim is now her husband.

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"The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.”
- George Will

I don't know. I think a clinical psychologist is better able to express the damage that can happen.

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When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

As far as I'm aware of the data, there is a substantial discrepency (or differential) between the size or magnitude of the 'effects' upon males and female 'victims' here.

Apparently, males seem to suffer trauma primarily from the element of public exposure. If there is no public exposure of the event, long-term trauma is fairly rare.

With females, it is the act itself that seems to be the cause of long-term trauma (independent of public exposure).

That is to say, in the vast majority of cases involving boys, it is the media/police/court circus that causes the long-term trauma, not the event in question.

The data seems pretty consistent on this point, though I don't recall offhand what the relative rates of long-term trauma is. I recall single digits for male victims.

If I remember what it was like high school, they'd be HEROES.

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"My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right." - Ashleigh Brilliant(?)
(Voting for None Of The Above, so far...)

Having just discovered this forum, I apologize if posting several days after the last post is inappropriate.

There are far too many variables for the law to ever become "one size fits all". A while back there was a 30+ man who impregnated his 9-yr-old stepdaughter (and evidence indicated he'd been molesting her for a couple years). For him I would vote a death sentence and volunteer to pull the switch (push the button) whatever. He forfeited his right to life when he so tarnished her life. But then there was the young college man who had oral sex performed by a young girl under the legal age, but (if memory serves) she was 17. That young woman was unlikely naive or unaware of sex. I have a lot of trouble with even prosecuting him. It was consensual and she was of an age to know what she was consenting to.

IMHO, if a young person is deemed mature enough to propel a few tons of steel down public highways at 55mph, they should be presumed to know what sex means and give their consent accordingly. Perhaps if the partner is many years older (shrug - 10yrs? 15?) maybe there is victimization .... but that has to be on a case-by-case basis.

The term "rape" can mean many things and I fear our laws do not do a very good job of drawing distinctions.

Yes, what really annoys me about our country is how we are very hung up on sex. The 19 year old boy having videotaped sex with his 17 year old gf (all consensual) will be labeled as a sexual predator for life, just the same as a 45 year old guy that raped a 3 year old girl. Both will be required to register with police, live over 1000 feet away from schools, etc. Both will have their lives ruined by it. But only one of them really deserves to. Yet because we do not break down our labeling of sexual predators by offense (statutory rape and corruption of a minor vs. forcibly raping a very young child), the parents are outraged when a sexual predator moves in their neighborhood, not knowing that perhaps it was an 18 year old high school senior that got caught having sex with his girlfriend. What we need is an actual labeling system that breaks down less serious offenses and more serious ones, and distinguishes those that are truly a threat to society from those who have made a mistake.

In the meantime, couldn't posing as a minor to try and pick up an adult on the internet be construed as entrapment? And haven't middle aged men figured out that any 15 year old girl telling them that they want to have sex with them and that their parents aren't home is either a cop or a member of perverted justice with a cop? Just interesting thoughts to toss out there.

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Ignorance is bliss, but the truth is treason.

http://blog.truthistreason.com

lol... "castration plus death penalty"?

I'm not sure which is supposed to come first. If we're supposed to kill and then castrate, I might suggest to the person or people who voted this one that ripping the genitals off of cadavers might make you happy for some reason, but it's not much of a practical deterrent. If it's supposed to be the other way around, then you're simply advocating gratuitous sexual torture.

Either way, you're kinda creeping me out. I'm glad there were no poll options available for the various devices used in the Spanish Inquisition or we might really see what it means to fight deviant sadism with deviant sadism.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

I agree, only americans (and Eurosocialist) make such dumb polls.

Castration plus death penalty - how the fuck is that supposed to make any sense?

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It all comes down to this on election day: Are you a racist, or do you look down on spastics?

Our entire policy towards sex offenders is nonsensical, practically everything is slanted against men leaving female predators a free rap.

Now we of course should await the ever absurd "I wish i was so lucky" comment.

If you actually have to ask such a question then obviously you lack common sense.Because common sense would dictate it wouldn't do any good to castrate the offender once he is dead.Seeing how it sometimes takes ten years to execute someone it would make sense to castrate first while he is awaiting his execution since that will be a lot nights the offender will not be able to jerk off to mental images of his victims.

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"There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language… and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”—Theodore Roosevelt

If he's on death row he'll be in isolation anyway, what's the worst he'll do? Semi violate one of the bars on his cell door?

Every now and then we do actually send women to jail:

FOXNews.com - S.C. Teacher Sentenced to 6 Years for Sex Acts With 5 Boys - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

Rare, but it does happen ocassionally.

Common sense also "dictates" that there is no deterrent or preventative value to society in gratuitously mutilating prisoners in custody prior to executing them. Neither scenario possible in the phrasing of the option expresses anything but sexual sadism, which is, by definition, beyond common sense.

I think many people would maintain that the justice system exists to protect the rights of citizens rather than to satisfy your rage based fantasies.

Really, man. Your solution is to fight sex crimes with sex crimes? If you really want to stick it to them, why not just demand that the state rape them and their families? An eye for an eye, right?

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Our historical forebears didn't share your view.

An example from 15th century France describes some bastard who was alleged to have tried to kill the King. He was whipped, hung, drawn and quartered, burnt and had his ashes scattered. All rather redundant according to common sense since the guy was already long dead before they quartered or burnt him.

As any survey of the US corrections system ought to show (or a survey of this thread), logic and common sense is not what is driving the policy here.

Lot of "no simple answers."

Which is a cop out.

The answer IS simple.

Some of us don't care to seem like we're favoring PERVERTS though so cop out and claim:

"Sorry, no simple answer."

How utterly chickenshit.