Also via Research Blogging, Christie Lynn of Observations of a Nerd says neither doh! both the “but she looked 18” and “but I was too drunk to tell” defenses against statutory rape are bogus.
Many accused of statutory rape claim two things – 1) that the girl consented and 2) that they thought she was older. The first is unimportant – if the girl is underage, it’s still rape. But in the US, there is a special defense clause which allows defendents leiniency if there is reasonable evidence they “mistook” a younger girl for one of consenting age. Many times lawyers claim that a girl’s makeup or guy’s consumption of alcohol impaired the offender’s judgement of her age. As an excuse, it’s pretty common among men charged with all varieties of sex with a minor. Well, researchers wanted to see if those factors really had an effect on how men (and women) estimated a girl’s age. The results are clear: alcohol had no effect on a man’s estimate of a girl’s age, and makeup had little.
There are some half-hearted attempts to but… but… but… from her commenters but overall the conclusion is the more “real world” you make the tests (adding voice or conversation, for instance) the less likely it becomes to legitimately mistake a child for an adult.
And does this have bearing on anything? Why yes, I believe it does!
The study Lynn based her post on acknowledged a fairly consistent age overestimation of roughly two and a half years. Which might make the error plausible for older underage sex workers. But… given that a) ignorance of the law is no excuse and b) a generally accepted age of first-entry into sex work is closer to 13 than 15.5 I’m feel even more attached to my strong preference for prosecuting customers of prostituted children and/or child prostitutes for child sex crimes instead of the far more lenient laws intended to police hiring sex-working adults. (Obviously I think hiring, or being, a non-coerced adult sex worker shouldn’t be a crime at all. Hiring a child, however, especially in the face of the finding Lynn reports, ought to be prosecuted with chilling ruthlessness.)
Submitted by 2872 (not verified) on Tue, 2009-04-21 05:51.
I think there's a typo in the first sentence (or else I'm totally misreading what you're saying). Do you mean that both, not neither of those defenses are bogus? If so, this is an interesting finding and like you say, it should be taken into consideration in prosecution.
[Yikes! Yes, that's an even more unfortunate typo than usual for me. Sigh. I've fixed it. Thank you, Jessica! --fl]