Peter Espeut | Abolishing the age of consent

It is my view that the effort to enact a close-in-age exception to the Sexual Offences Act will lead to the effective abolition of the age of consent for sexual intercourse.

The Gleaner in its editorial last Saturday (May 23) makes my point for me.  “The close-in-age exception (or ‘Romeo and Juliet law’) is a legal provision that prevents consensual sexual activity between young people from being prosecuted as statutory rape, provided the individuals’ ages and maturity levels are similar”.

And just in case you thought The Gleaner editor has misspoken: “At the centre of the debate is a difficult but necessary question: if consensual relationships between adolescents close in age continue to be treated as criminal offences under Jamaican law”.

So The Gleaner asserts that children now considered under the age of consent, can take part in “consensual sexual activity”.  Therefore, there will no longer be a legal age of consent.  In law, a girl of thirteen will be able to “have consensual sexual intercourse” with a boy of seventeen or eighteen (just four or five years older than herself).

Words have meaning; “consensual sexual activity between young people” means that young girls will have the legal right to give consent to sexual intercourse with boys whose “ages and maturity levels are similar” to hers.  In other words, immature girls will be legally able to consent to sexual intercourse with immature boys.  After all, they are both of similar age and (lack of) maturity.

That will not be the end of the matter; it will just be the thin edge if the wedge.  

I can see it all now.  “”Consent is consent” will be the argument smart lawyers will bring before the courts.  If a 13-year-old girl has the personal ability to give consent to sexual intercourse with a 17-year-old boy, why does she not have the capacity to consent to sex with 27-year old?  You can write the law to make one legal and the other illegal; but – mentally and physiologically – what is the real difference?

If you say a girl-child is not mature enough to give her body to a 27-year-old, I will agree with you; but by the same token, she is not mature enough to give her body to a seventeen-year-old boy.  What branch of science determines that the age of the male determines whether a girl-child is emotionally able to give sexual consent?  Which expert witness can give that testimony?

I was very taken by the column in last Sunday Gleaner (Child’s Month and the Age of Consent) by family physician Dr. Garth Rattray.   His medical training and more than 40 years of experience makes him sure of “the immaturity of the teenage mind and the possible deleterious consequences of decisions made during that fragile period of our lives”.

I am sure that he would be considered an expert witness about these matters, should an enquiry be held.  He goes on:

“I never understood why the minimum age of consent, in Jamaica, was 14 years prior to December 13, 1988. Since that date, the minimum age of consent was raised to 16 years. The amendment to the Offences Against the Person Act, came about because of concerns over teen pregnancy. However, knowing that the teenage brain is still under major construction has always made the [current] minimum age of consent of 16 years incomprehensible to me”.

His argument – as I understand it – is that teenage girls cannot be considered mature enough, i.e. mentally developed enough, to responsibly consent to sexual intercourse, whether with younger or older males.  Dr. Rattray states:

“The age of consent should be raised to 18 years because many changes take place in the brain between 16 and 18 years old.  Doing so would also add another layer of protection for schoolgirls and reduce the pregnancy rate in that cohort. … 

“Because many teenagers appear proficient in matters hitherto confined to adults, exhibit precocious behaviour and are [obviously] extremely sexually aware (thanks to our modern / permissive society and to the widely and easily available ‘mature’ material all over the Internet), they are perceived as being fully mature, but this is a very serious misconception. … Between 16 and 18 years of age there is improvement in the prefrontal cortex development – planning, impulse control, emotional regulation, cognition, increased capacity for abstract thought, faster decision making, better risk assessment, and more efficient neural connectivity”. 

If scientific opinion is that adolescents are not capable of responsible consent to sexual intercourse, then all hands must turn out on deck to discourage early sexual activity (experimentation) among young people.  But no-one has the balls to do it!

The memory of slavery is too fresh in Jamaican minds for rational people to advocate serious limits to what some people call “freedom”.  Permitting a highly sexualized society in the name of “freedom of speech” and “freedom of expression” sets up new forms of slavery, rather than a greater commitment to self-control and self-discipline. What we get is a society where emotional adolescence is prolonged into adulthood.

Freddie Hickling: we miss you!

The era of sexual liberation is upon us.  The editorial policy of this newspaper has long been to advocate for sexual freedom (i.e. sexual pleasure) among consenting adults of whatever gender combination, and the use of whatever technologies are available to avoid or terminate pregnancy.  Declining population is the inevitable result.  Giving a ‘bligh’ to the young to engage in sexual pleasure is consistent with this stance.  The age of consent is a nuisance.

The faculty of reason is located above the neck, not below the belt.  Clear heads must think the problem through, and not seek facile approaches which will only sink us deeper into decadence and mental illness.  What we must aspire to is a sexually responsible Jamaica, and the education system and legal system must work together to make it happen.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and development scientist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com