Enforcing "statutory rape"?

Public Interest, Summer, 1998 by Michael W. Lynch

Questions of objectivity

Ooms's paper attracted little attention, since it merely repackaged old studies and reported on a meeting of unnamed scholars. But it was tied to the release of another study that reported new data. This study, "Partners, Predators, Peers, Protectors: Males and Teen Pregnancy," was also commissioned by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. The co-authors were from Child Trends Inc., a Washington-based nonprofit that researches issues affecting children. They analyzed newly available data from the Department of Health and Human Services' 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, which collects information on pregnancy and childbearing. The study focused on the first sexual experience of teenage girls: Was it voluntary? How old was her partner? Was contraception used? The Child Trends study found that nearly two-thirds of the first sexual partners of teenage girls were within two years of the girl's age and that nearly three out of four couples were going steady at the time. Sixty-nine percent of girls welcomed their first sexual experience.

Strangely, for a study tied to the Ooms paper, the data paint a picture strikingly similar to the findings of the older studies, even though they deal with first sexual experience as opposed to pregnancy. As in the previous studies, the data diverge by age. The younger the girl, the less likely her partner would be sharing a school, much less a classroom, with her. The study reports that "only 18 percent of girls who were younger than 14 when they first had sex had a partner who was within a year of their age; this was the case for 37 percent of teens who were 14-15 years at first sex, and for more than half of teens who were 16 years or older." The data on which the study was based show that 35 percent of girls 15 or younger first had sex with a partner at least three years older. Nearly one in five 13-year-olds lost her virginity to a man at least five years her senior. In addition, the study found that the wider the age difference, the less likely the couple would use contraception (79 percent for same age and 66 percent for difference of five years).

The data from the Child Trends study confirmed that the youngest girls are most vulnerable to the predatory acts of older men. The larger the age gap, the more likely sex was unwanted by the girl. While 26 percent of girls who first had sex with someone of the same age reported it as unwanted, 37 percent of girls whose partner was five or more years older did. Nearly 40 percent of 13- and 14-year-old girls reported their first sexual experience as unwanted; for those who had sex younger than 13, more than 70 percent reported it as unwanted.

The Child Trends study clearly adds to our understanding of teenage sexual activity, but tile decision to tie its release to Ooms's paper, in which the data merely spun previously released studies, raises questions of objectivity. A spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy which commissioned the paper, John Hutchins, says one of the "key goals" of the expert roundtable and Ooms's paper was to examine the issue of statutory rape. "We didn't see the release of these reports as being corrective of these other studies," he says. "We don't dispute what they say. We just wanted to tease out what they meant." But the data are sure to disappoint those who want to make the case that the problem of statutory rape is of minor significance. All available data consistently show that the younger the girl, the older the man. And since it is the youngest girls whom government has the greatest interest in protecting, attempts to muddy the issue with creative statistics run contrary to the realities of teenage pregnancy and the interests of the youngest teenage mothers.