I don't understand...

[applemint]

So let me get this straight Ghoti & Applemint, what you are both saying is the rights of the offender are far more important then the effect they have had on someone and possibly ruined the rest of their lives ?

No I clearly never said that and I think you are aware of that. Sounds like a Straw Man fallacy to me.

 

[Bernie174]

Essentially, rape and rape of a child under 13 ('Statuatory' rape is an Americanism), are the same thing. The only difference is that there's no defence consent. Although obviously can be mitigation. In offences rape with a child over 13, and below 16, you have to prove there was no consent, and there is a defence, if not charged with rape, but of sexual activity with a person under 16, that there was a belief they were over 16.

However, that said, the moment any one mentions pedophile the automatic conclusion and commonly held belief everyone jumps to is a person under 16. And hell and damnation follow. Forgetting of course that many of us here had our first sexual experience with someone under 16, or condoned it by being the person under 16!

Committing sexual offences against children has never attracted a very heavy sentence, and if (and it's so improbably to not be worth considering) the death penalty was returned to the UK, it still wouldn't apply to sexual offences.

 

[ghoti]

Essentially, rape and rape of a child under 13 ('Statuatory' rape is an Americanism), are the same thing. The only difference is that there's no defence consent. Although obviously can be mitigation. In offences rape with a child over 13, and below 16, you have to prove there was no consent, and there is a defence, if not charged with rape, but of sexual activity with a person under 16, that there was a belief they were over 16.

However, that said, the moment any one mentions pedophile the automatic conclusion and commonly held belief everyone jumps to is a person under 16. And hell and damnation follow. Forgetting of course that many of us here had our first sexual experience with someone under 16, or condoned it by being the person under 16!

I willingly lost my virginity aged 15 to a boy of 16 (or he may have been 17, I can't recall, it was 14 years ago). And I'm still on friendly terms with the perpetrator.

 

[viv1969]

I willingly lost my virginity aged 15 to a boy of 16 (or he may have been 17, I can't recall, it was 14 years ago). And I'm still on friendly terms with the perpetrator.

If you're that friendly, ask him his age