Enforcing "statutory rape"?

Public Interest, Summer, 1998 by Michael W. Lynch

Even the smallest number that can be produced - Ooms's "less than one in ten" - still begs the question: Why shouldn't we care about one in ten? In 1994, about 393,000 babies were born to unmarried women 19 and under. At 8 percent, more than 31,000 of these babies fall into Ooms's "less than one in ten" category. In that year alone, 12,000 babies were born to unmarried women under 15 years old. The data indicate that 40 percent of these babies are the result of unions with a significant age gap. That's 4,800 babies. What California's Anderson wants to know from those researchers who are questioning statutory-rape laws is, "Would they sanction their daughter, who is 15, being impregnated by a guy who is 27? Or is this something that we sanction for other people's children?"

Will it work?

Realizing that this battle will never be won by data alone, opponents of statutory-rape enforcement are advancing other arguments. Chief among them is the contention that these unproven programs may generate unintended consequences, making them worse than doing nothing at all. The Guttmacher Institute's Patricia Donovan made this case in the January/ February issue of Family Planning Perspectives. In "Can Statutory Rape Law Be Effective in Preventing Adolescent Pregnancy?" Donovan draws heavily on interviews with "law enforcement officials, reproductive health care providers, women's rights activists and policy analysts" to put forth what seems to be the prevailing liberal view of teen pregnancy, and of why statutory-rape laws will not work. As Michelle Oberman of the DePaul University Law School explains in Donovan's paper, "Adolescent child bearing is the result of an intricate web of factors, including limited opportunity, entrenched poverty, low self-esteem and many other issues that statutory-rape laws do not address." Circumstances, not individual decisions, generate unfortunate outcomes. In this view, adult men who pursue intimate relationships with minor girls are not responsible for getting them pregnant.

But, while intellectuals argue about root causes, most everyone else should be able to see the value in giving meaning back to the term "jailbait." Donovan recognizes this, quoting California officials who predict that their program, in time, will deter offenders. But she is unconvinced: "The enforcement strategy is only likely to work if the men it targets - and their young partners - know that these relationships are illegal." Donoran then quotes law-enforcement officials who claim that "predators know they aren't supposed to have sex with someone underage." But for balance, she quotes pregnancy-clinic administrators who claim that "very few know the rules."

It may be true that many 25-year-olds don't know they aren't supposed to have sex with 14-year-olds. But this doesn't mean that they won't get the message after an acquaintance, or even an acquaintance of an acquaintance, winds up in jail. This is what Carla Grabert, deputy district attorney in California's Kern County, is discovering, after a year and a half of prosecuting men for statutory rape. "The first time I talked to teen dads on probation, only a few knew there were laws against sex with minors," recalls Grabert. "Now when I ask the boys, 100 percent raise their hands. The word is getting out."