Community | February 20, 2012 | 50 comments

Should Teens Be Jailed for Sex Offenses?

source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/25/should-teens-be-jailed-for-sex-offenses-a-g...

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Incredulous
Parents are fighting powerful laws that imprison teens for sex. Prosecutors say kids should respect the law. Meet one young Romeo who didn't—and spent six years behind bars.

Francie Baldino, a mother of two from Royal Oak, Mich., can tell you the day she became an activist against America’s sex-offender laws. It was the day her teenage son went to prison—for falling in love with a teenage girl.

“The prison term was unthinkable,” says Baldino. “He was just a dumb kid.”

Her son, Ken, was an 18-year-old senior in high school when he was arrested for having sex with his girlfriend, a 14-year-old freshman, in 2004. The age of consent in Michigan is 16. He got sentenced to a year in jail and three years’ probation. After that, when the two teens resumed their relationship—violating his probation—he got five to 15 years.

His mother is part of a surprising rebellion that has now spread to all 50 states: parents fighting against sex-offender laws—the very laws designed to safeguard their children. These parents argue that the laws are imposing punishments on their high-school sons that are out of proportion to the crime.

Baldino’s son, for instance, spent more than six years behind bars and today must wear a GPS device the size of a box of butter. Sometimes, he says, it loses its signal and sets off an alarm. “That’s really helpful when I’m at work,” says the blue-eyed 26-year-old, who wears stud earrings and works at a door-and-window store.

No one keeps a tally of how many cases fall into this category nationwide. But there is one measure of the scale of the movement: there are now more than 50 organizations—at least one in every state—battling against prosecutions like these. Baldino’s group is Michigan Citizens for Justice, which she says includes more than 100 parents. Another group in Michigan, the Coalition for a Useful Registry, has around 150 parents as members, it says. Organizations in other states report similar numbers. One of the largest, Texas Voices, claims some 300 parents as members.

The cases they are fighting are highly complex, charged with emotion, and rarely black-and-white. The questions are profoundly difficult: Should the scales of justice be weighted in favor of the young? Is a sex crime somehow less terrible, if it involves teens? The judge in the Baldino case, Fred Mester, openly acknowledged the complexities. Referring to his own high-school days when handing down the prison sentence in 2005, he said, “Half my senior class … were dating freshman girls, and I suspect half of them would be in here today.”

Prosecutors say it’s simple: kids should obey the law, and parents need to keep their children under control. Paul Walton, a chief assistant prosecutor in Michigan, says Baldino’s son had only himself to blame: he was an adult, and he chose his own actions. “The court isn’t imposing restrictions because it’s fun—it’s the law,” Walton says. “You can disagree on the age of consent, but the law says that prior to that age, a person doesn’t have the ability to consent.”

Baldino is quick to say that she doesn’t advocate underage sex. And both she and her son admit he broke the law. He “did stupid things,” she says, including getting in a physical fight with his girlfriend’s father one evening in 2004—a fight that began the chain of events that led to the police being called, and his arrest for underage sex.

Baldino argues simply that the law should treat teenage lovers differently from pedophiles or violent sexual predators. “The punishment is too extreme for kids,” she says. “It’s a system that’s not working.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/25/should-teens-be-jailed-for-sex-...
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50 comments // Should Teens Be Jailed for Sex Offenses?

  • MotherForTruth
  • cynhtia592813348
  • Itsbatman_Durr
    • +2
      Itsbatman_Durr  

    • sex crime laws, like megans, were a knee jerk overreaction used to prey on our fears and make money for the state. like the bird flu, it made great fear tactic headlines, and served to drive a further wedge between you and your neighbor, because they would have us believe sex offenders are behind every tree waiting to pounce.

      educate. rehabilitate those that need it. create a climate where we know it is morally wrong to assault children. dont start a witch hunt, or notch up the fear.

    • 3 months ago
  • lazloman
  • EmperorThan
    • +5
      EmperorThan  

    • I think as long as it is consensual the police need to deal with REAL crimes, ones where people aren't consenting, and leave the kids to be dealt with by their parents.

    • 3 months ago
  • MSII
  • EmperorThan
  • tverdell
  • rerushg
    • +2
      rerushg  

    • Perhaps if we were not so compelled to send kids off to war at 18 we'd be less inclined to burden them with adulthood at 18.

    • 3 months ago
  • good_stuff
    • +3
      good_stuff  

    • "The punishment is too extreme...” she says. “It’s a system that’s not working.”

      Welcome to the USofA. The laws never make sense and are frequently contradictory. They are created by the circus that we call our political system. Look at the hoopla concerning the Casey Anthony case and the reactionary laws coming from that, it just gets worse everyear. Laws should be based on what is fair and just, but it in our system each politician just try to up the next by increasing sentences. Poople are starting to see the problems this creates.

    • 3 months ago
  • Swisher
    • +4
      Swisher  

    • Take your age and divide it by 2. Add 7. That's the minimum age your partner should be. (Just a suggestion) There is no substitute for parenting!

    • 3 months ago
  • EmperorThan
  • jpvt
    • +2
      jpvt  

    • What has to be considered in a case like this is that four years difference in age isn't very big when it comes to adult relationships but it becomes a greater and greater concern the younger the people in the relationship are.

      24 and 20 don't seem incompatible at all to me.
      At 20 and 16 it starts to see like someone could be being taken advantage of.
      18 and 14 seems like a significant difference in the level of maturity (physically and mentally) and I can see where this particular person got in trouble (the punishment seems a bit harsh, but I think he there should have been some intervention).
      At 16 and 12 I feel that there should be serious concern about the well being of the 12 year old.
      How about 14 and 10 where you have one person who is sexually developed and one who is most likely not. That seems like a pretty bad idea to me.

      So, it's not so much the difference in age, but the relative age of both people.

      I realize that for thousands of years girls were married off soon after their first period, but that's not the way things our in our culture at this time. This 18 year old should have know by the reactions of his girlfriends parents that this relationship wasn't cool with them and should have waited to have sex with her until she was the age of consent. He brought this on himself. As the more "mature" party he should have made himself aware of the risks involved in pursuing the relationship. Also, before anyone gets on a soap box about the right of the 14 year old to do whatever she wants with her body, there's a lot of things we don't let 14 year olds do legally that we let 18 year olds do (like pierce their ears). Also, she should have been aware of the potential consequences that could befall her boyfriend if her parents pursued legal action against him. If she loved him so much why did she put him in that situation?

    • 3 months ago
  • Incredulous
    • +2
      Incredulous  
    • jpvt:

      "So, it's not so much the difference in age, but the relative age of both people."

      Excellent point, one that cannot be dismissed, and also one that, I think, needs to be taken into consideration when we are dealing with teenage sex. If it was a 14-year-old and a 24-year-old, there would be even more cause for alarm, and yet, the way our laws are written, the subtleties of age difference you just outlined are not really factored in.

      It is one of the issues I have with conservative governing. They like to frame everything in black and white, a rule or law for everything, and something to pander to their political base with. Another egregious example of this is the 3 strikes you're out law. While I can definitely see the need for addressing the situations this law attempted to address, it is also hard to ignore the consequences of this law....we have a larger portion of our citizenry incarcerated than any other developed nation. WTF? The death penalty is another example....how many people have been unjustly put to death because the death penalty seemed to make things like justice easier to dispense. It's not easy. There are no easy or prefabricated solutions to the pitfalls of humanity, and we either take the time to figure out what we are doing and why we are doing it...or....freecrack's point of view is entirely relevant.

    • 3 months ago
  • lazloman
    • +2
      lazloman  
    • jpvt:

      I agree with the point that 18 may be too old for 14. If I had a freshman daughter, I wouldn't want her dating a senior. But it shouldn't be criminal. Now this guy will have to spend the rest of his life being categorized as a child molester.

    • 3 months ago
  • jpvt
  • Tayllerand
  • remanns
    • +2
      remanns  

    • Seriously though - NO. Parents should lock their daughters in THEIR OWN damn closets, if they have issues,.....and QUIT bothering, and ultimately BILLING, their neighbors.

      We could always just have teenagers spade/neutered . ( Take them in when its time for the family dog,....I would be willing to subsidize some sort of group discount to help keep the population down . . .)

    • 3 months ago
  • remanns
    • +2
      remanns  

    • No. I have room for more teenagers in the pit in my basement.
      Happy to help out.
      "It rubs the lotion on its skin . . . . "

    • 3 months ago
  • freecrack
    • +2
      freecrack  

    • im always a big fan of holding idiots to their idiocy.
      do it.waste tax payers money hunting down kids.
      fill the courts and jails with the kids.
      lets see just how productive that is.

    • 3 months ago
  • Incredulous
  • freecrack
    • +3
      freecrack  
    • Incredulous:

      lol you think im kidding?
      im totaly not.im dead serious.
      texas wants to leave the union, im like fucking do it bitch.lets see how awesome you are when you shit talking idiots piss off another nation and get invaded.
      you want creationism instead of evolution, go for it.teach that instead.the rest of us will enjoy science, as you idiots devolve backwards.
      and anyone who wants to criminalize what is a natural function of age, go for it.
      waste your time rounding up horny kids, cuz their are so few of those (that line a the sarcasm), fill your jails, and your courts will this bullshit, while rapists and murders go free from lack of jail space.just like the problem we have with the war on drugs, the other useless abuse of law in relation to human behavior.

      let these idiots tell us more about how evil big government is, while the abdocate their basic parental responsibilities to it.let them usher in an orwellian existance, with no one to blame other than themselves.finally making them confront their own bullshit.
      rather than the rational saving them from themselves yet again.

      gee i wonder how the forbiden fruit dynamic would play out in a society that criminalized teen sex.im sure it wouldnt result in a massive rise in statutory rape cases at all.

      we tell them, and they put their fingers in their ears screaming "la-la-la- i cant hear you" and then call us intillectual elitests.fuckem them.dont learn from us.let em learn the hard way.fill your prisons with your children cuz they are just as horny as you were at their age.release the bank robbers and murders early to make room for them.
      tell another generation of people that what they feel is illegal and wrong.
      create more forbiden fruit to be sought passionately.

      lets see how long they can handle that before admitting they are fucking stupid and wrong.

    • 3 months ago
  • Incredulous
    • +2
      Incredulous  
    • freecrack:

      luv you fc, big smile spreading across my face as I read this.....and truthfully, you are not the only person I know who believes this just may be the solution to what ails this nation.

    • 3 months ago
  • freecrack
    • +2
      freecrack  
    • Incredulous:

      its just tough love man.
      if the death penalty were at play i wouldnt advocate for it.
      but it isnt.
      you can tell a kid a zillion times not to touch the stove cuz its hot, but some just wont get it until they burn themselves, and some need to burn themselves a few times to get it.

      we dont let the idiots impliment what they want, and then they get to act as if it would have worked.let them fail.force the progress rather than asking politely for it, as it is clear they will not be reasoned with.

      i say remove sex education from all the schools that dont want it, take out evolution and let them teach the bible all they want.
      lets see how many generations of grandmas raising their teens babies for them they can handle before they figure out they are wrong.

    • 3 months ago
  • Tyr
    • +2
      Tyr  

    • I am 12 years older than my wife..hmmmm..I'm sure there are those who think that is criminal...Do those who are defending this really believe that a 6 year sentence is just? Given the nature of the offense...this sounds to me more like a father extracting revenge for getting his ass kicked than his daughter making love to her boyfriend.

    • 3 months ago
  • Paratus
    • -1
      Paratus  

    • Why in the world did the parents sit around and do nothing when their 14 y/o daughter was going out with an 18 year old? One is considered an adult and the other is a child. Big difference.

    • 3 months ago
  • Joeydee44
    • +3
      Joeydee44  
    • Paratus:

      By your logic half of the high school population in America should be imprisoned. Maybe the parents should've locked their daughter in the closet to protect her from the world, hmmm?

    • 3 months ago
  • Incredulous
    • +2
      Incredulous  
    • Paratus:

      I'm not sure how you inferred from the article that the parents of the 14-year-old girl sat around and did nothing. In fact, her father and her boyfriend got into an altercation...and let's see, there were also the Montagues and the Capulets who also had trouble controlling the sexual impulses of their teenagers....but hell, that's not relevant, it's just a piece of classic literature.

    • 3 months ago
  • cantucwearebrothers
    • +2
      cantucwearebrothers  
    • Paratus:

      Do you have a teenage daughter? I'm interested to know what exactly they were to do to stop this from happening. Ultimately. I understand issuing consequences and discipline...fine...that's great....issue away. This can still happen. It does still happen. At school, at a friends house, wherever. Can the child be 'locked up in the basement'? Yes, but what damaging effects will that have?

      Additionally...why is it so much of the time that the female is younger than the male? The issue of maturity levels has been addressed, but not how it's relative in regards to females maturing faster.

      I'm not advocating this by any means, but are the solutions really that simple?

    • 3 months ago
  • Milieu
  • jubal
    • +6
      jubal  

    • 100 years ago 14 year olds were getting married to 18 year olds. This is where the fucking religious right has been steering our country and the corporations who profit from the law enforcement. Its totally fucked up.

    • 3 months ago
  • Paratus
    • -2
      Paratus  
    • jubal:

      "This is where the fucking religious right has been steering our country"
      This is one of the more ignorant comments I have read here, and that is taking into account a lot of ignorant comments. This is statutory law genius. It has nothing to do with the religious right, a group that you obvious hate and will stop at nothing to vilify, probably even for the recent snow and accompanying accidents as a result. They are probably responsible for sunspots also. No wonder we look at liberals and just shake our heads.

    • 3 months ago
  • Joeydee44
    • +3
      Joeydee44  
    • Paratus:

      Let's go back to Chastity Belts. That'll work. You get the keys to drive your girlfriend on her 18th birthday. We'll let Big Daddy hold the keys until then. Conservatives will love it!

    • 3 months ago
  • Incredulous
  • Incredulous
    • +4
      Incredulous  
    • Paratus:

      Ignorant: Lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular.

      Not sure how you can label jubal's comment ignorant. I don't think jubal is ignoring anything....I think his eyes are open and he is paying very close attention.

      Statutory law does not just come into being on its own....so the fact that this is statutory law does not automatically validate it...and these parents of teenagers being treated as criminals are questioning that law....it's what people do in a country that claims to be free.

    • 3 months ago
  • remanns
  • jubal
    • +4
      jubal  
    • Paratus:

      Christianity in this country is responsible for regressive social policies that have resulted in the unfortunate and unnecessary deaths of thousands of people who feel that if they cannot live up to their, Christianity's, untenable ideals, they opt to exit this life (suicide). Yes I do detest hypocritical and political Christians who defile the words of Jesus and focus on marginalizing and punishing, doing what was never commanded of them, while ignoring completely the prime directive of Jesus, their namesake, to love your enemies and to turn the other cheek and on and on and on. They promote child sex when it suits them and condemn it for political reasons. They are nothing more than a den of thieves and vipers.

    • 3 months ago
  • MSII
  • MSII
  • KB723
    • +2
      KB723  

    • Her son, Ken, was an 18-year-old senior in high school when he was arrested for having sex with his girlfriend, a 14-year-old freshman, in 2004. The age of consent in Michigan is 16. He got sentenced to a year in jail and three years’ probation. After that, when the two teens resumed their relationship—violating his probation—he got five to 15 years.

      I guess he should have waited, 1: Til he was off Probation... 2: til she was 16???

    • 3 months ago
  • Incredulous
    • +3
      Incredulous  
    • KB723:

      true, they both made some stupid decisions...I suppose the real question here is why are we making teenage sex a criminal offense? I think there is a difference between predatory sexual behavior and foolish teenage behavior, although the devil is surely in the details. There is something unsettling about the entire issue. It does not seem to rest easily in either one of the predefined categories of right and wrong....

    • 3 months ago
  • KB723
  • Leen61
  • Incredulous
    • +3
      Incredulous  

    • “The laws often don’t differentiate between a 50-year-old man molesting a 14-year-old girl, and two teens having sex,” says Cheryl Carpenter, a Michigan attorney.

    • 3 months ago
  • remanns
  • remanns
  • remanns
  • remanns
  • remanns
  • Incredulous
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