SB 53 amending the law on the crime of child seduction was passed by the Indiana General Assembly. Child seduction generally involves sexual activity between an individual who is 16 or 17 years old and an individual who is 18 years or older and in a position of trust or authority with respect to the 16 or 17 year old.
This bill defined “professional relationship” as being one where a person has a license issued by the state or political subdivision based on training or experience in the person’s occupation; or where the person’s position is one where counseling, supervising, instructing, or recruiting children forms a significant part of the employment; and the person has a relationship with the child based on such licensure or position.
An 18 year old or older person commits child seduction when they have sexual activity with the 16 or 17 year old where the older person:
(1) has or had a professional relationship with the younger person;
(2) may exert undue influence on the younger person because of the professional relationship; and
(3) uses or exerts the person’s professional relationship to engage in the sexual activity.
I don’t have a problem with the concept here. If you have authority, you shouldn’t be using it to have sex with teenagers. But, it did highlight to me the difficulty of drafting legislation in this area. Strictly read, I think the crime would apply to an 18 year old life guard hooking up with a 17 year old who goes to the pool regularly.
The lifeguard is employed in a position where supervising children is a significant part of the employment. The lifeguard may well have developed a relationship with the 17 year old because of his position. The lifeguard’s influence and attractiveness to the 17 year old could well be enhanced by the lifeguard’s status as (relative to ordinary pool patrons) a person of authority and interest. And, obviously, an 18 year old lifeguard is not going to be above leveraging the position to enhance romantic prospects.
Now, even if I’m right on the strict construction; I wouldn’t think any self-respecting prosecutor would pursue such a case. But, where possible, you really don’t want the good will of fallible humans to determine whether execution of your law is a good thing or bad thing.
You give prosecutors too much credit. They are fully capable of prosecuting allegations that should never be prosecuted. Here is the case of a 20 year old who had dated a 17 year old.
http://www.ogdenonpolitics.com/2011/07/substitute-teacher-charged-for-child.html
He turned 21, and got his substitute license. The 17 year old was still in the school. It is not clear whether the relationship continued or not. There is nothing to indicated he was a sub in her class.
Having a previous legal dating relationship is a defense to sexual misconduct with a minor but not to child seduction, which was probably just a legislative oversight. He’s now a felon for child seduction.
http://www.ogdenonpolitics.com/2011/07/substitute-teacher-charged-for-child.html
Shame on the judge, and shame on the jury.
Not having spent hundreds of hours in a criminal court, and not being a defense attorney, I have, on the other hand, seen the consequences of lots of teenage stupidity, and witnessed at lot of craziness. In this area, aren’t skunks (self-righteous hypocrites) often in charge of determining who is and is not a skunk, and when we are talking about violators, isn’t it true that today’s victim is sometimes tomorrow’s perpetrator? Life is, after all, not the typical Hollywood story, where the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad, and people under 18 are sweet and innocent, then nasty and culpable when they have a birthday. When we have laws that cut issues so finely, sometimes among people who haven’t defined their boundaries very well to begin with, it tends to compound problems, rather than clarifying them. In the end, people seem to suffer needlessly, and the public is only confused and irritated rather than encouraged by persons in the law enforcement community.
As an attorney who has spent time in both juvenile and adult criminal courts, there is a distinct difference in the way the State treats these individuals. However, it is not about the punishment in the separate courts, but rather the focus is on the ultimate outcome.
Juvenile court is, and should be, geared towards rehabilitation. It is the hope of most juvenile courts that you can get the individuals involved in the system at such an early age help that they need so that they may become productive members of society by the time they are 18. Some, as with any situation, are a lost cause and they end up being in and out of the system for the rest of their lives.
Adult court – depending on what level of crime and the recurrence of that crime by that individual – can either be rehabilitation or punishment. While it might not seem likely, prosecutors are trained to believe that their job is, ultimately, justice and not punishment.
Justice can come in many forms. The process of going through the justice system sometimes is enough. For others, they need community service. Some need addiction rehabilitation and for others, jail time. Coincidentally, prosecutors have to know what is proper and make that judgment call when they offer plea deals.
It’s not as easy as it looks or seems sometimes. However, justice is the key to always remember.
What an awesome responsibility. Especially when we consider the fact that our knowledge in the areas which inform the judgments (psychology, sociology, medicine, for example) are still relatively primitive, relative to what we need to know, issues are so complex and the options and resources seem so limited, or at least are not fully understood. The goal is not only honorable but almost sacred, it seems to me, but I don’t think we would want it to be any less than that. It seems we are poorly prepared to be up to the task for many of the people who go through the system, in part because these people are often so broken to start with and present with issues that are not just legal, but problematic in so many areas. So while legal issues predominate, the best judgment should be an intersection of the best of all areas, even though our knowledge in all those areas is far from complete.
Lawyers receive not a day of training in “Justice.” Indeed, they’d fail the class, as it’s offered by one of the real departments on campus, where a winning argument is not one that rests its conclusions on other arguments made by prior students.
If “Justice is the key,” you’ve put the Bar out of work, as doing Law is anathema to doing Justice. The two efforts seek wholly different purposes. Law is irrelevant to Justice. Laws are enacted. Justice precedes law. The meddlers outright repudiate the idea that there is a higher moral truth than law against which every law must be measured.
Oh, I don’t know if members of the Bar would “fail” a class on “justice.” Considering that the only class I know of that is completely on “justice” is the one offered at Harvard and it has nothing to do with law, but rather on what society has taught us. Do you, Freedom, know of a separate one that can be had here in the State of Indiana?
I believe, based on my experience, that most of us in the profession have a heightened sense of right and wrong due to the fact that we deal with that very question everyday. Now, how we fight for our client is completely separate since that is technically our job. However, the vast majority of us never forget to base our recommendations and our negotiations on what is fair and just to resolve an issue that is the best outcome for all involved.
Your pessimistic attitude towards our society in general is very troubling, sir. Very troubling indeed.
I disagree, David. Lawyers have an entirely warped view of morality. “Right” and “wrong” are quaint and irrelevant concepts. “Legal” or “winnable” are the rationales that get all the traction. “Right” and “wrong” don’t pay the bills. Winning the point is all that matters to a client. A lawyer will literally say anything to win.
After a lawyer has practiced for an appreciable period, the mortgage, the daughter’s dental bills, the country club memberships, the BMW payment and one’s status in the community become so dependent upon saying whatever the paying client needs said that “right” and “wrong” become destructive notions and must be attacked.
For those lawyers with corrupted souls, the law is all there is, and any attempt to point to something higher than the law becomes a threat to the mortgage, the daughter’s braces, the country club membership, the BMW payment, the community status and the faux “professorships” at law “schools.”
In the legal system, “Justice” is redefined every day and means nothing more to them than “the current state of the law.”
Ah, Back with more unsupportable ravings. There is nothing higher than the law except your delusional and self-entitled sense of “justice.”
So a lawyer will say anything to win. You will say anything, anytime to self aggrandize what you pass off for an intellect.
Freedom, in the relatively short time I’ve posted on this blog, I’ve learned a lot and enjoyed a number of good and positive discussions. From your posts, not so much. That’s mainly because the posts from which I benefit tend to be rational and are open to data, if not offerings of actual data. Many offer wonderful insights. Yours, not so much, but they do draw a reaction of stunned silence. It would be a service to me, if not most who post, to warn us whether your posts will be evidence-based rational contributions or a primal scream that seems to stem from some deep disappointment that you feel you have experienced.
Carlito, you like to make a big show of pretending to side with the little guy, but when it’s time to be counted, you always stand with the bourgeoisie landed interests.
I wonder if you’re smart and learned enough to understand the camp into which disagreeing with my comment places you? Or is it that you’ve yet backed yourself into another logical corner by being reflexively noisome and contrarian?
Yikes Freedom. Again, I say your view on our society is troubling. I am sorry that you feel you were wronged by someone so bad that it made you turn into someone who lashes out at the very thought that there might be good people out there trying to do good things. I wish you all the best, sir.
I don’t think this would apply to lifeguards; while they do need a certificate to be employed, the certificate comes from the red cross (or something similar) and not from the state or a political subdivision.
Although this does add another aspect to various attempts to deregulate occupations.
I think the licensure aspect is disjunctive from employment where supervising children is a significant part of the employment. In other words, you could be on the hook for this law either because of your license or because of your supervisory role.
I guess my problem, which I discovered when I was 14 and more than double that number of years later instill retain: why do we impose these arbitrary laws based on the number of times the Earth has went around the sun, as though that very act somehow inexplicably affects us all in the exact same way.
An 18 year old, lifeguard or not (and male or not), should be able to date a 17 year old, and the only people who should have a say in the matter should be the parents, and even then at best they can only make suggestions.
Where the statutory line is drawn would ideally be defined on a case-by-case basis, but that is wholly impractical. I would gather that if either party is under the age of 21, then the key factor should be the difference in age, 3-4 years would probably suit most situations, and I think that in every case parental involvement should be enough to dissolve the State’s interest in any case that breaks those violations. If the law say a 3 year gap, but an 18 year old wanted to date a 22 year old, then the parents of the minor should be able to absolve the States ability to prosecute the 22 year old.
Then again, it’s depressing to me that we need to legislate this kind of shit at all.
It’s very depressing that the meddlers meddle. Throughout 99.999999% of humanity’s existence, 18 was a late age to begin having intercourse, and 21 was well into adulthood. The United States and its ignorant meddlers continue to destroy consent, autonomy and have well postponed, if not utterly eradicated, maturity and accountability. People in this country have succumbed to the stifling of individualism by acting only when first given government permission. To those in the permission business, the trade is brisk. Wallets are lined, and there is no end in sight to their bounty.
There is no country not manipulated by the United States where an 18 year old lifeguard would be legally called to answer for sneaking around the back of the building with a 17 year old swimmer.
Would you have some examples of those claims to show that this is not just a rant, unless you want to simply acknowledge that it was just a rant? That’s O.K., too.
” you always stand with the bourgeoisie landed interests.”
Yep, the secret is out. And for the record, those are generally the people I represent. The checks come in on time.