On Teens, Marital Consent, Schooling without Consent, Roman Rota

RA (status):

And the apologia for child abuse continues, brought to you by the Washington Post.

wp:Sex between students and teachers should not be a crime
By Betsy Karasik,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sex-between-students-and-teachers-should-not-be-a-crime/2013/08/30/dbf7dcca-1107-11e3-b4cb-fd7ce041d814_story.html

KB

Indeed, the media didn't really care about the abuse scandal within the Church except as a bludgeon against Her.

LLM

Louise Le Mottee "I’ve been a 14-year-old girl, and so have all of my female friends. When it comes to having sex on the brain, teenage boys got nothin’ on us." LIES LIES LIES!

HGL

"I don’t believe that all sexual conduct between underage students and teachers should necessarily be classified as rape, and I believe that absent extenuating circumstances, consensual sexual activity between teachers and students should not be criminalized."

1) If he wanted to have sex with her - marriage or anything else - he should have stopped being her teacher. And wood in a proper fashion.

2) Since she was 14, she was clearly OF age to be married, and not under age, nor a child.

If you say anything against those points, you are not a Catholic. Obviously, the perpetrator was not a Catholic, since he could feel such guilt about a child abuse that never really happened.

Supposing it was guilt that stopped him from wooing properly.

Neither was she if she committed suicide.

And top consideration:

Why should male teachers be teaching female students aged puberty or above at all?

LLM

I don't agree with you, Hans-Georg. It is true that in canon law the minimum age for a woman to marry validly in the Church is 14, but canon law does speak of the norms in each country. Since the US tribunals are happy to consider anyone under the age of 50 as being "not mature enough"to have given their informed consent and thus be eligible for a dodgy annulment, I don't think the age of 14 applies here really. Also, we're not talking marriage are we? We're talking fornication. When the people of the US generally agree that women at age 14 or even 25 are mature enough for Holy Matrimony, your point may be taken. (Hyperbole used in this comment).

HGL

My point is that the problem is a culture where women age 14 are supposed to prepare for academic carreers and not supposed to start motherhood carreers. It is also on a depopulationist agenda.

I can add that: 14 is a recent raising from 12 (male part was raised from 14 to 16), and norms of each country is a recent addition.

One other problem - if she committed suicide after the act, she belonged to a culture closer to the rape of Lucretia being cause of her suicide and end of Roman Monarchy than to a Hebrew and Christian culture in which rape victims often pardon and sometimes marry perpetrators.

LLM

There are more problems with the West than one can poke a stick at, but until the normative marrying age for a girl in the US is 14 or just over, I think your point about the non-criminality is not quite on target. I don't think the particular custom in the West of statutory rape are inherently unjust, although I'm open to persuasion on that point. And I agree with all else you say.

HGL

In SC normative marrying age was 12 (or undecided) as late as back in 1995. It was raised and is now 16 in SC.

LLM

It wasn't culturally normative though, was it?

HGL

Depends on what part of SC culture, doesn't it?

LLM

I don't know enough about it - I'm Australian. Tell me more.

HGL

In 1995 a girl of 12 married an old man to finish school - it was legal and as she married she could not be forced to stay in school.

Clinton promised to change that. Alas, he did.

LLM

Yes, but that's an exception, not the norm. Is there a sub-section of society in SC where it is normative for very young women to marry?

HGL

Well it is partly hillbilly and redneck culture - an option that was not frowned at.

LLM

That must be quite a long ways out in the sticks! Well, what can I say? If that be the case, if it's just to lower the age of marriage to 14 or even 12 for a girl, then let the States each do so, but let's also have some consistency and insist that the age of 14 or 12 is sufficiently mature to know one's own mind and properly consent to Holy Matrimony so that at least we hear no more nonsense in the Church's marriage tribunals. And let the fornicators be flogged.

HGL

No more nonsense in the Roman Rota? I heartily agree to that!

(Unless of course that Roman Rota belongs to a counterchurch and the real Rota is in Elx or Vatican in Exile or even Palmar ...)

Now, this here culture is being remodelled by ideas not if Christian origin - like Betty Friedan's about how women are free and a Republican of how literacy is a civic duty with the three R's ...

continued on FB

and updated here

EKJ

So teachers are the victims here? This whole "move and rehabilitate" idea she expounds seems like exactly the idea that the Church was sold as a solution that caused the issues in the 80s.

PC

But I think the fundamental question is, should sexual relations with a teacher and an underage student always constitute rape, from a legal standpoint? Without affirming anything else, I can't say I think every act can be blanket blanket labelled rape. I have a relative who is spending 5 years in prison for "rape" because he was 18 and his girlfriend was 15 and everything was consentual - and, here's the kicker - they later got married, and he was arrested and charged with rape years later, when he was 25, she was 22 and they had been married and had a kid for years! No, just saying every act of a certain kind equates to rape is unjust.

HGL

unless the kind in question is - rape? I suppose you mean!

DL

There are certain relationships where sexual contact must always be criminal--that includes teacher/student and psychologist/patient. Until that relationship ends, consent can never be certain. There is always the strong danger of subtle coercion.

PC

I didn't say it must not always be criminal, but must it always be rape? Or are there no other classifications for criminal sexual conduct other than rape? Why not make a new classification of "Sexual contact between a teacher and consenting student"? Can we diversify the criminality to distinguish between true rape (forcible sexual violation) and inappropriate acts that are illegal not because they are forcible but because of the status of one or more of the parties?

DL

We could, but this is hardly unique. Statutory rape is considered rape even though there is no forcible sexual violation.

PC

That's what my problem is...statutory rape should not be considered rape in the strict sense. I'm not for decriminalizing the situation described in the article above, but there are too many cases where people are charged with rape when it really should be something less.

Like I said, a relative of mine is serving 5 years and will be labelled a sex offender forever because he had consentual sex with a girl 3 years younger than he, whom he subsequently married and had children with. The charge of rape, brought retroactively 7 years later because of the statue of limitations had not expired, disrupted the whole family.

DL

And just who brought the charges against someone for sleeping with someone who he subsequently married? That seems absurd. Getting married typically covered all such sins from a legal standpoint in the past.

PC

He applied for Medicaid, and the state worker who read the application did the math - saw he was 25, wife 22 and son 8. Since statute of limitations on statutory rape is ten years in MI, the state worker turned him in. He got a 5 year prison term.

HGL

Idiotic!

@DL - I read this one of you while scrolling up:

"There are certain relationships where sexual contact must always be criminal--that includes teacher/student and psychologist/patient. Until that relationship ends, consent can never be certain."

You might be interested to scroll back a few comments, click the "see more" button on one of mine and read:

"1) If he wanted to have sex with her - marriage or anything else - he should have stopped being her teacher. And wooed in a proper fashion."

Note that by stopping to be her teacher I do not mean stopping all teaching, but take him to another class or her to another class and inform all school about the reason. If that had happened, she might have been alive and his wife and a mother by now.

As to psychologist patient it is a relation that should not exist at all. It is a secularised version of confessor penitent or at worst exorcist possessed. It is also a bad reason stopping many patients who would be better off marrying from precisely marrying.

DL

The social worker was an idiot. Marriage should end the state's interest. However, the nanny state is never satisfied.

Hans-Georg, I agree with you. I only partially agree with you on psychologists. In Greece, one spiritual father sent neurotics to a pious psychologist --- and the psychologist sent psychotics to him. There can be a healthy relationship between confession and psychology---mostly, however, you are correct that there is not.

LLM

That's terrible, Philllip. Sounds like a case of the letter of the law overcoming thoroughly the spirit of the law. If the law is as it is regarding statutory rape, why are not teens informed of this properly as part of their so-called sex-ed? I know we were never informed at all about the legal side of things. Is this not a dereliction of parental/teacher duty?

HGL

Who says there was any good spirit of the law either in such a legislation?

Teens are very probably informed about what constitutes statutory rape. In Sweden we were informed that even consensual sex before 15 is a crime (not named rape but "sexual intercourse with minor of below 15" - there are two words for minor, and the other one means below marital consent age) and we were also informed that if both are young teens close in age, there is usually no prosecution.

In other words the law - letter and spirit and application - force girls age 14 or 13 to prefer an oaf their own age who in our society cannot be a breadwinner as the market is now to someone whom she could normally - in a sane society - marry.

Even so what is our counterpart to statutory rape happens. A really sad case was when a 14 year old Muslima married a Moroccan slightly older and when she was fifteen and gave birth, social workers did the maths and concluded the Moroccan was guilty. He was sent to prison, then exile. She was sent to a kind of boot camp with their child. But cases when the boyfriend or adult lover begs for abortion to hide the so called "crime" are far worse.

"that includes teacher/student and psychologist/patient. Until that relationship ends, consent can never be certain. There is always the strong danger of subtle coercion."

For shrinks, I agree.

Now, for teachers and pupils, that might be the case if either or both (but especially the girl) were idolising school in the first place - giving it a place which belongs to God, to the Church, to the Sacraments.

A normal person would not have dubious consent due to subtle coercion in such a case.

What would even in normal persons be of dubious consent is the scholarly part.

A pupil should not take every word of the teacher as the Gospel and should not "jurare in verba magistri". Would not a love affaire falsify her mind's consent to his teachings in class?

A teacher should grade the pupils according to merit, and being his lover may be a merit but is not a scholarly one.

That is why I think a teacher getting romantically involved with a pupil of his class (I am not speaking of cougars to male pupils, which would normally not end in marriages due to the shorter common period of fertility) should either change class himself or let her do it so that they were no longer teacher and pupil of same class.

"This whole 'move and rehabilitate' idea she expounds seems like exactly the idea that the Church was sold as a solution that caused the issues in the 80s."

The reason why this solution was sold in the Church was that shrinks were waiting for the moment when Catholic Church would give up celibacy of priests and thus make possible a full rehabilitation.

In teachers who are not bound to celibacy it makes much more sense.

Now, for teachers and pupils, that might be the case if either or both (but especially the girl) were idolising school in the first place - giving it a place which belongs to God, to the Church, to the Sacraments.

A normal person would not have dubious consent due to subtle coercion in such a case.

What would even in normal persons be of dubious consent is the scholarly part.

A pupil should not take every word of the teacher as the Gospel and should not "jurare in verba magistri". Would not a love affaire falsify her mind's consent to his teachings in class?

A teacher should grade the pupils according to merit, and being his lover may be a merit but is not a scholarly one.

That is why I think a teacher getting romantically involved with a pupil of his class (I am not speaking of cougars to male pupils, which would normally not end in marriages due to the shorter common period of fertility) should either change class himself or let her do it so that they were no longer teacher and pupil of same class. And in either case of course tell the school, colleagues and comrades and parents and all.

As I reread story, it seems there was no actual rape.

And the girl may well have committed suicide not because the teacher was so in control of the situation (I have heard idiotic things said about a fourteen year old and an adult it is always the adult who is in control, and if not he is not mentally stable or something), but probably because the now prevalent ideology made an issue in marriage between the man now serving 30 years and his pupil impossible.

LLM

Just as a side note to all this - and I can see where you are coming from, Hans, you are talking of marriage for young people - but I do wonder where the push for a lower age of consent comes from in the general community? Surely it is just that they want to be able to fornicate with ever younger people? Such persons are not interested in marrying young people (or anyone much it seems).

It sounds like the youth of Sweden are informed of the laws relating to under-age sex. It was not so in Australia when I was growing up and I doubt it is now.

HGL

Such persons as are not interested in marrying young people are not either interested in lowering the age of matrimonial consent. Having a lower age for consent to fornication than for marriage is an eldorado for them.

And even heightening the age of consent to present absurd ages of matrimonial consent is an eldorado for some who count on being above the law. And believe me it is already very much harder than hundred years ago to abide by the law, in this domain as in others, so the marginal for trickstering has very much increased.

No, I would say it was the push for lifting that age of matrimonial consent that came from people sexually but not matrimonially interested in the young.

LLM

sorry, I didn't understand what you mean by eldorado. The lowering of the age of consent for fornication is what some people want, but with no interest in a lowering for the age of marriage. That's what I was talking about.

What you say about schools is quite right, btw. It's absurd that people should now assume they'll be in school until their early to mid-twenties! Instead of marrying etc. Quite ridiculous.

HGL

Eldorado - a Spanish word or rather phrase for unlimited opportunity.

Of course age of marital consent should be quite as low as age of other consent or possibly lower. And when it comes to unnatural acts, there we have a real reason for attacking the love between old and young and especially between even teacher and pupil, since in such relations very easily a polarity of domination and submission replaces the natural one of two poles of fertility. Even in heterosexual relations using lots of contraceptives there is a real danger of that polarity (subsidiary to absent in normal heterosexual relations) becomes the main spur of desire.

I think the legislations back a few hundred years ago dealt with it correctly. Supposing John Calvin was branded in 1534 (as a Catholic convert from Anglican heresy discovered in Noyon after his death, he could not answer), it may well be that he was the passive part and therefore regarded as just seduced and therefore let off without death penalty.

The phrase El Dorado was a city or kingdom some Conquistadors were searching for. In some versions of legend it really meant their ruler, who regularly sacrificed himself into a volcano after dipping all his skin in gold dust. In others it was a city where you could pick gold as in normal places you can pick figs or pebbles or ... and from that version comes that phrase or meme "X is a [real] Eldorado for Y".