Why I Defend Lots of Sex Offenders, and Why You Should Too

Take a look at these faces. These young boys are convicted U.S. sex offenders. That tells you a lot about our country, about how we view sex, about how we fetishize law-enforcement "solutions," doesn't it?

I'll never play down actual sexual violence, including rape, by teenage boys. But of course, most adolescent sex offenders are guilty of nothing of the sort. Most of them haven't truly victimized anyone. They are guilty, if you can call it that, of being curious, and horny, and possibly confused, as befits their age.

At 13 or 14 or 15, they are trying to figure out what it means to have developing bodies and a case of raging hormones, and sometimes the tentative fumblings that result run afoul of laws that politicians and prosecutors are grimly applying to ever-greater numbers of people, kids included, because American voters love the binary clarity of good versus evil, pure versus perverted, young Becky's innocence versus young Robert's budding immorality.

So this is, more often than not, how teenage sex offenders are made:

A girl in school has oral sex with a boy in school. She becomes a sex offender for the rest of her life. Streaking a school event, as a practical joke, becomes a sex crime in the new America. Two kids “moon” a passerby and are incarcerated in jail as sex offenders, where they may well learn a lesson or two about rape. A teenager, who takes a sexy of photo of him, or herself, is paraded around the community as a “child pornographer” for the rest of his or her life. Two kids in the back seat of a car have fumbling sex. The law says one is an offender because the other is a “victim.” One week later, a birthday passes, and it is no longer a crime. One week’s difference and a life is ruined. In other cases an act that is legal on Monday is illegal on Tuesday because the older of the two turned one year older. That becomes enough to qualify him, or her, as an offender.

So again, there are these mugshots, and they speak volumes. Absolute heartbreaking volumes. But louder still speaks this graph, below, and the accompanying realization worded succinctly by the blog Classically Liberal:

When you look at the ages of the offenders you see that 14-year-olds are apparently the most sexually dangerous group in America. The rate declines from there, but throughout adolescence the law is far more likely to deem kids as offenders. You may imagine the dirty old man down the street. But with age people are less likely to “offend”. One reason is that they are more mature. But another reason is clear. Once you reach a certain age, having sex with people your own age is normally not considered a crime. The explosion of “youthful sex offenders” is not the result of our kids becoming perverts. It is the result of the law criminalizing what is a normal part of growing up.

Here is one such case: Here's another (hat tip: the Agitator), of a young man who took nude photos of his then-17-year-old girlfriend. They later married, but because he was an adult at the time the pictures were taken, he was branded a sex offender anyway. When he failed to report his new address, as he was by law required to do, the U.S. justice system decided to put him away for three to six years.

Take one last look at those photos on the top. Those kids, I assure you, are no more wicked than you or me. Most of them, and most of their fellow young offenders, pose zero danger to anyone.

They are not the perverts here. We are, as a society, for tolerating — no, demanding — the willful destruction of children's lives while telling ourselves it's really all about protecting kids.

Comments

[George Arndt]

I wonder how many of these so-called "gardians of public moraliy" did simular things when they were young?

[Deep Fryer]

This is terrible. I think if we properly talked about sex with our kids and they understood what sex was designed for, and who it was designed for, these kids wouldn't have these problems. I really believe for girls, it comes down to respecting their bodies, and understanding that emotionally they are not ready for the responsibility of sex. This isn't talked about freely between children and parents because sex is considered a "hush hush" dirty topic. I don't think it should be. -Sylvia

[Michelle]

Sylvia: It makes me think of the musical Spring Awakening, where at the beginning the girl asks her mother to explain how babies are made, and the mother doesn't give her a real explanation because it makes her uncomfortable. Then, when the girl becomes pregnant, the mother is furious at her, but the girl really doesn't understand how it happened.

Of course, sexual knowledge is much more prevalent now than in the time period that the musical was placed in, but the idea is the same. Parents just don't want to deal with this. Instead of trying to pass on real knowledge and understanding to their children, they just say that it's wrong, and that's that, and to question it is to sin or to break the law.

[The Dude]

You fail to mention a common problem in all of these cases. The failure of a prosecutor to use their discretion. We wouldn't need more willing defense attorneys if we had prosecutors who refused to pursue truly victimless crimes.