Marcello Mega examines the proposals to reduce the age of sexual consent
LIKE an ever-growing band of young Scottish females, Carol’s introduction to sexual intercourse occurred when she was under the age of consent. The manner of the loss of her virginity, again like many Scottish girls, was not of her choosing.
Carol had just turned 15 when she started going out with Tam. He was two years and four months older. He had a job and a car and she fancied him like mad. She wanted to keep him.
The first time he managed to get her alone in his car at night, he persuaded her to masturbate him. Within another week, she was giving him oral sex, which became a regular treat for Tam. It was, he said, the key to keeping him faithful.
Soon, oral sex wasn’t enough. All Tam’s mates were getting the ‘real
thing’. If Carol wasn’t mature enough, he would find a girl who was.
Alone with him in her parents’ home a few days after he raised the
issue, he wouldn’t take ‘no’, or the usual oral substitute, for an
answer.
He kept kissing her aggressively, using his weight to pin her to her
single bed and tugging at her clothing. Eventually, he was inside her.
If he noticed the tears running down her cheeks, he gave no sign.
To this day, and several years have passed, Carol has never fully
accepted that she was raped. “He was my boyfriend, I loved him and we
were sexually active. That night, I struggled and asked him to stop,
but I didn’t scream, I didn’t kick or scratch or bite, and I didn’t
plead with him.
“He put all his efforts into overcoming my resistance. In his head, it
was possibly seduction. But part of him knew it was wrong. After he’d
finished, he couldn’t look me in the eye and was in a hurry to get out.
I knew I hadn’t consented, but he was my boyfriend and we were already
so intimate, I didn’t think of it as rape. Even now I have my doubts.”
Carol now works with vulnerable young girls and she admits: “I hear
similar stories from them all the time. It’s depressing but it’s an
incredibly common scenario for teenage girls losing their virginity.
When I hear it from their mouths and I can see they’re still children,
it does sound like rape.”
Carol didn’t tell her parents or any other adult. She told her best
friend, who was horrified and encouraged her to report it. But Carol
still had her doubts. Had she been forced or simply persuaded? In any
event, at 15 they were already wise enough to know the justice route
was likely to prove a road to humiliation.
However, Carol made a number of wise decisions soon after her ordeal.
She dumped Tam, vowed to learn from the bitter experience and get on
with her life and subconsciously, decided her future career would
involve helping vulnerable young girls.
Despite how she views her own ordeal, she is concerned about the
Scottish Law Commission’s proposal that sex between consenting children
aged between 13 and 15 should be decriminalised, with even the fairly
serious cases that arise being dealt with by the Children’s Reporter
rather than the courts. That view has been endorsed by Kathleen
Marshall, the Children’s Commissioner, and Tom Halpin, deputy chief
constable of Lothian and Borders Police.
Carol says: “In my case, my boyfriend was well past the age of consent
and sexually experienced before we met, but even as a pair of fairly
naďve 15-year-olds, my friend and I knew there was no point reporting
what he had done. Everyone who knew me knew he was my boyfriend.
Everyone who knew him probably knew I was giving him oral three or four
times a week.
“I was underage and he wasn’t, but it would have made no difference.
Nothing that I’ve seen in recent years working with vulnerable girls
has made me think I was wrong. Many, many girls are losing their
virginity at 13 and 14, most of them to older teenage boys, some over
16 and some under.
“It makes very little difference whether the boyfriend is 15 or 16. If
they’re in a relationship and the girl makes it clear the sex has been
consensual, it is very rare that it would result in charges, and in
most of those rare cases, the charges are later dropped.
“This makes me wonder why people like a deputy chief constable and the
Children’s Commissioner would talk about ‘decriminalising’ children for
consensual sexual activity when it so rarely happens. It’s a bit like
calling for decriminalisation of those who toss the contents of their
chamber-pot off the balcony.
“It just doesn’t happen any more and, potentially, it removes the last
safeguard of a young girl who is being pressurised into a sexual
relationship she is not ready for.”
Last year, Holyrood reported at length on the ordeal of a 14-year-old
girl from Perth who lost her virginity in the most appalling
circumstances. Drunk on a half bottle of vodka at a house party with no
adults present, a 16-year-old boy took her upstairs and had sex with
her while his 15-year-old friend, a promising footballer, abused her
anus with a football figurine and filmed the whole thing on his mobile.
The video footage was inevitably sent round pupils at the school they
all attended and police were called to investigate. Viewing the
footage, experienced detectives concluded she had been incapable of
consent and reported it as a rape. John Beckett QC, the Solicitor
General, decided a charge of rape would not stand up, and refused to
proceed with a charge of unlawful sex because there were only two years
between the pair. He was concerned a conviction would see the boy on
the Sex Offenders Register.
In the end, the sexual abuse charges against the young footballer were
also dropped, despite the evidence presented by his own film, but he
was charged with and admitted distributing child porn. Sheriff Michael
Fletcher admonished him because he didn’t want to have an adverse
effect on his ‘promising’ football career. The only person punished in
any real sense was the victim, who suffered the humiliation of her
peers seeing the undignified footage, lost many of her friends and
eventually was driven out of school.
Her mum recognises that the Crown and courts took little heed of the
age of consent in dealing with her family’s case, but, like Carol,
still regards it as an important safeguard. She says: “Everyone is hung
up on being realistic and recognising that children are having sex at
an earlier age. In our case, everyone seemed to be concerned with the
welfare of the boys, not that of my daughter.
“But if the age of consent is lowered, or similar incidents are
officially decriminalised, it will simply encourage less respect for
the right to say ‘no’, and promote the idea that it’s OK for kids to
have sex.”
The commission’s proposals, part of a wider review on rape and sexual
offences, have provoked a fairly passionate debate about the age of
consent. If the proposals on consensual under-age sex were accepted,
critics say it would effectively lower the age of consent.
For centuries, it stood at 12 in Britain, until it was raised to 13 in
1875, and then ten years later to the current age, amid concerns about
under-age prostitution. While we all recognise that many young Scots
are sexually active long before their 16th birthday, many believe that
the age of consent, and the threat of possible criminal proceedings, is
an important safeguard that helps empower girls who want to say ‘no’.
Kathleen Marshall, the Children’s Commissioner, was indignant over
recent media reports that she was effectively endorsing sexual activity
between children. A number of symapathetic interviews allowed her to
clarify her position – that she did not condone such activity but was
against underage boys being criminalised for consensual sex with their
underage girlfriends.
She underlined her position: “I recognise the need for the law to
respect the vulnerability of young people by maintaining the general
prohibition on sexual activity between young people aged 13-16. Sexual
activity under the age of 16 should not be condoned or regarded as the
acceptable norm.
“It will be important that any changes in the law are
accompanied by an education campaign to give young people the
confidence to resist overt or covert pressure to engage in sexual
activity
It will be important that any changes in the law are
accompanied by an education campaign to give young people the
confidence to resist overt or covert pressure to engage in sexual
activity 
.
“Clearly at the moment, whatever we are doing to protect children
from engaging in early sexual activity is not working. We turn a blind
eye to it because the only response that’s available to us presently is
to classify it as a criminal offence – and no-one wants to criminalise
young people.
“We’re more likely to secure an effective intervention if
we change our response from a criminal one – punishing young people by
applying the law – to a welfare response through the Children’s Hearing
system
We’re more likely to secure an effective intervention if
we change our response from a criminal one – punishing young people by
applying the law – to a welfare response through the Children’s Hearing
system
.”
Back in January, Lothian and Borders’ deputy chief constable Tom
Halpin, speaking with his ACPOS (Association of Chief Police Officers
Scotland) hat on, also made headlines for similar observations. ACPOS
has since clarified its own position – that it does not want to see the
age of consent lowered.
But do Marshall and Halpin really need to be concerned about something
that happens so rarely. It was also slightly disconcerting to some of
us that they should suggest that a law clearly designed to protect
vulnerable children was punishing, even criminalising them. The Crown
Office was unable to provide statistics on how many cases of children
being prosecuted for having consensual sex with other children had been
recorded in recent years, but police sources confirm it is virtually
unknown.
The Lord Advocate declined to offer any comment on the matter, and the
Justice Minister’s desk simply repeated the mantra that this is a
complex and sensitive area of law, and that it was vital the law
protected young people.
Marshall and Halpin at least had the courage to attempt to make
meaningful contributions to the debate. Both doubtless meant well, but
it is unfortunate that they unwittingly used the language that would
have been celebrated by a very dangerous organisation.
IPCE, the International Paedophile and Child Emancipation group, is
made up of a number of intelligent, articulate men drawn from many
different countries. They correspond regularly online, and hold an
annual meeting at a secret location.
They also seek to infiltrate and influence health and political
conferences all over Europe. Their raison d’etre is to normalise
‘consensual’ sexual relations between adults and children. They lobby
political parties and influential pressure groups to reduce or abolish
the age of consent and use emotive language about ‘criminalising
children’ to try to normalise sexual activity between children.
Between 2001 and 2004, I worked on a number of articles about this
unsavoury crew. At intervals during that period, a brilliant Dutch
academic I was fortunate to know infiltrated their online
correspondence and passed it on. Much of what I read was sickening, but
it was endlessly fascinating.
Members included leader Frans Gieles, a convicted Dutch paedophile, Tom
O’Carroll, a convicted British paedophile and a founder member of the
reviled Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), and Ricky Turner,
another PIE founder who boasted in documents I obtained of his sexual
abuse of young boys in Ghana.
Also among their number was Richard Yuill, then studying for a PhD at
Glasgow University. A former teacher, Yuill had been struck off the
register after inappropriate sexual ‘horseplay’ with boys in his care.
He was working on a thesis that would: ‘Challenge the theoretical and
empirical assumptions of abuse in man-boy relationships; articulate
boylove relationships and identities outside a medico-psychological
model; put forward positive historical, cultural and contemporary
experiences that challenge many current attitudes, and redefine man-boy
love and man-boy relationships.’
In a message to O’Carroll, he mocked the university for accepting his
‘bona fides’ as a researcher. Not surprisingly, he concluded that many
youths had found ‘relationships’ with older men satisfying,
economically beneficial or useful as part of a coming-out process.
Given that this equates with funding the tobacco companies to produce a
thesis showing the health benefits of smoking, it’s hard to see how
Glasgow University accepted this claptrap as research.
I corresponded with Gieles by email for a while. Both in his messages
to me and in the correspondence between members I viewed online, it was
clear that the party line was to concentrate on the rights of children;
not the rights of children to be free of abuse and exploitation, but
the rights of children to freedom of sexual expression.
The tactic was to achieve a lowering or abolition of the age of
consent, ostensibly to decriminalise sexual activity between children.
Over a period of time, this would inure the public to the notion that
children should not be seen as sexual beings. Eventually, they hoped,
sufficient numbers of people would stop distinguishing between children
having sex with other children and children having sex with adults.
You might think it could never happen in Britain, but I’d suggest there
are numerous signs that it has already begun. Not only are police
chiefs and children’s champions inadvertently promoting IPCE’s
philosophy, there are clear signs from the offices of our prosecutors
and the panelled walls of our courts that while we still frown on
adults who seek sex with children, as a society, we are becoming more
tolerant.
In the worst UK case of its kind in recent years, an English judge,
Julian Hall, described a ten-year-old girl who was raped by one man in
his 20s and sexually abused by another as a ‘young woman’. By the time
he’d finished blaming her for wearing frilly underwear and looking
older than her ten years, it was clear he would have preferred to jail
the victim rather than her assailants, who he grudgingly sentenced to
two years, in one case, and nine months in the other.
Judge Hall’s outrageous conduct did at least provoke outrage. In
Scotland in January of this year, The Sun carried a single column story
back on page 41 under the headline ‘Boy sex sir jailed’.
A 32-year-old teacher was sentenced to a year for having sex with a
14-year-old boy he met in an internet chatroom. Sheriff Craig McSherry
said the teacher knew the ‘young man’ was 14. Since when did you become
a man at 14? The lack of media anger at the sentence or the language of
the sheriff added to the depression the case provoked in me.
It was not an isolated incident. Last month [May], Iain Freeman, 20,
from Airdrie, was also jailed for a year at Edinburgh Sheriff Court for
grooming a 13-year-old girl on the Web before meeting her for sex. The
girl, who lost her virginity in a public toilet, had never even kissed
a boy before. Again, the story made a single column in most tabloids
and provoked no outraged leaders about the sentence.
Also last month, Craig Black, 17, from Ayrshire, was jailed for six
years for raping an 11-year-old girl and having sex with a 13-year-old
while on bail for the more serious charge. Effectively, given average
sentences for child rape, the second offence went completely unpunished
even though committed while on bail. Again, there was no great media
fuss.
It would be wrong not to recognise that the commission and those who
support its proposals have taken a fairly pragmatic view of the lives
of most Scottish teenagers. Children reach puberty much younger than
they used to. Modern lifestyles and exposure to everything you can
think of (and quite a lot you can’t) on the internet, combined with
raging hormones at a younger age, inevitably leads to people becoming
sexually active earlier.
But far too much effort on the part of those who have a voice seems to
go into facilitating the ‘inevitable’. We have one of the highest rates
of teenage pregnancy in the world, large numbers of girls going through
the agony of abortion each year and a steady growth in the numbers
infected with sexually transmitted diseases, yet few seem to be willing
to promote the unfashionable message that you don’t have to succumb to
peer pressure and have sex.
They also appear to be oblivious to the hopes and desires of some of
the sickest people in our society. The real long-term winners in any
change of policy that results from the commission’s proposals will not
be 15 or 16-year-old boys, who are already getting away with having sex
with their younger girlfriends. It will be the men in their 20s, 30s,
40s and beyond who want to have sex with children.
Our legislators would do well to consider the example of countries that
are the traditional destination of Northern European sex tourists. In
the Philippines, for example, prostitution is legal and the age of
consent is 12. Men who travel there alone to have sex with children
soon tire of abusing 12-year-old prostitutes.
Most of them are pushing the boundaries, as men like that always do.
They are looking for children of 11, ten, nine. For some, the younger
the better. We might consider ourselves a long way away from that
society, but if we make the wrong moves now, we’ll get there, and many
of us might even live to see it.
It has become as unfashionable to turn to our religious leaders for
advice these days as it has to tell children they should abstain from
sex until they’re old enough, but Ronnie Convery, spokesman for the
Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, seems to me to have hit the nail on
the head: “It is not about numbers of prosecutions or convictions, but
rather the sending out of a dangerous message.
“Any indication that sex with minors may be in some sense acceptable is dangerous, and clearly wrong.”
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