Statutory rape

The term "statutory rape" is sometimes used when national and/or regional governments, citing an interest in protecting minors, consider people under a certain age to be unable to give consent, and therefore consider sexual contact with them to be equivalent to rape regardless of the minor's consent.

Rationale of statutory-rape laws

The rationale is typically that although a person may be biologically mature enough to desire sexual intercourse, he or she may, lacking the additional years of experience and social seasoning possessed by legal adults, not be able to make mature or rational decisions as to whom he or she has sex with. Thus, even if he or she willingly engages in sexual intercourse with an older person, said older person may well have used tactics of manipulation or deceit against which the younger person has not yet developed sufficient discernment or defense.

Related Topics:
Manipulation - Deceit

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This is perhaps one of the major points of contention in statutory rape controversies; even a young teenager might possess enough social sense to make informed and mature decisions about sex, and, conversely, some people well above any agreed-upon age of consent might never develop the ability to make mature choices about sex, as even many mentally healthy individuals remain naive and easily manipulated throughout their lives. Any agreed-upon age of consent, however useful it may be for the perceived "average" individual, therefore necessarily carries with it some degree of arbitrariness.

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