Today there has been a bit of a “discussion” on the age of consent thanks to a suggestion from Professor John Aston that we should perhaps consider lowering the age of consent to 15 in the light of just how many young people indulge in illegal acts. The government in a classic demonstration of wooly thinking has ruled this out.
But there’s no harm in having the discussion … and I’d be perfectly happy if the age of consent were raised to 18, or even 30!
The trouble with a simplistic age of consent barrier is that it criminalises consensual sexual activity between two teenagers; to the extent that they could find themselves on the sex offenders register. As adults we could brand the behaviour of such teenagers as irresponsible, and immature, but criminal? That seems a bit extreme.
Simply lowering the age of consent to puberty – when a child becomes an adult in physical terms – is also wrong as it leaves those teenagers open to exploitation by sexual predators.
What seems sensible is to adopt measures similar to Sweden’s where an age of consent is a fuzzier thing. Let us pick an age – such as 18 – as the age of consent, but where either participant is under that age of consent, then the act is only criminal where the other party is more than 2 years older.
One other thing that struck me about the discussion in the media today – there is a wide assumption that the only sexual predators hunting young people are men. Yet there are female abusers, and by casual assumptions we are making it harder for the victims of female abusers to come forward.