h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This post has been removed.

So, the first post is hidden pending moderation. Possibly because the mods or someone else think I'm making this up, or it's sub judice, or something.

For clarity - all of the facts I related in the first post were reported on a national newspaper website yesterday, November 30th. I don't want to link to it yet, because to do so would constitute a spoiler for the question posed in the first post, i.e. take a guess why there isn't automatic jail etc.

I shall name the defendant and provide a link to the national newspaper coverage of the case if and when
(a) the first post reappears AND
(b) someone takes a guess.

I'll take a punt at this one, despite not having seen the original post, but having read something odd in the press a few days back (vague recollection)

Is it because it was a female abductor of a male?

Got it in one!

If you're a paedophile and you want to escape a jail sentence and public revulsion - be a hot chick. Double standard, anyone? (Think about the reaction if it had been a 27 year old man who'd been boffing a 15-year old girl after having been ordered to stay away.)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1334121/Ballet-teacher-Sarah-Pirie-admits-abducting-15-year-old-boy.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

You don't think the fact that her father is a former British Ambassador (allegedly) and her stepfather is rich, has anything to do with it (as in she's got a very expensive lawyer)?

Or how about this:

>>
Michael Lavery, prosecuting, said matters that would need to be disclosed to the court about the 15-year-old boy meant it had been concluded there was ‘no realistic prospect of a conviction’ on those charges.
<<

Of course it's so easy to know everything about a legal case and the complexities therein from the Daily Mail.

*

I'm sure gender does have *something* to do with it, but I doubt being a hot chick is enough to convince the Crown Prosecutor to drop an otherwise valid and provable charge.

I'm not going to comment on this particular case - although I can understand why there would be difficulties in securing a conviction if the victim is unwilling to give evidence.

However, I am going to comment on the attitudes - and, as Tiggy says, double standards - that are obvious from both the article and its presentation (the pictures used are just weird, given the nature of the case) and on the comments below the article. At root are some nasty prejudices and assumptions about gender, which don't do anyone any favours.

Apparently all 15 year old boys (and presumably by extension, all males) are sex-crazed and gagging for it 24-7. Presumably some are, but I think a lot of that is front and bluster. Surely we can have a more nuanced view of masculinity in the 21st century?

I don't mind saying that as a 15 year old, I would have found the 'attentions' of a adult very disturbing and unsettling, and definitely unwelcome, no matter how attractive she was. No doubt others would have felt differently at that age. I remember years ago when I worked at a kids' adventure holiday centre, there was a young lad (probably 14 or so) who was very unhappy about a girl (of a similar age) who apparently used to sneak into their dorm at nights. In fairness, some of his dorm-mates had no problem with it, but he did, and he found it very, very difficult to say anything or to object. I remember having to reassure him that it was all right to feel uncomfortable about it, that I would have too at his age, and that I at least thought that this was as serious as if roles had been reversed. The trick then was to stop it happening while making it look like no-one had said anything.

Another nasty prejudice in all this is the assumption by some that a 15 year old boy could consent, while a 15 year old girl couldn't - even though girls mature faster than boys. So apparently boys are autonomous and independent, while girls are still delicate flowers needing protection from predators and from themselves. Some nice good old fashioned sexism....

I largely agree with that Otto, although I'm not sure the boys are sex mad and girls are delicate flowers myth is as universal as you present. However there *are gender differences.

15 year old girls have 15 years of socialisation that is quite different than boys. In previous generations that equated to women are caretakers and tend to put others needs ahead of their own. This makes it harder for many young women to say no. I'm not sure how that plays out now - there is this idea that young women are more assertive, but I'm not convinced that this is about true empowerment that leads to good decision making.

There's also a huge amount of pressure on young girls to have sex, both peer pressure and pop culture pressure. Likewise boys I know but here's the point relevant to this conversation - I would hazard a guess that the opportunity for 15 year old girls to have sex with older men is reasonably common, whilst that opportunity is much less common for boys (but I'm open to hearing from someone how knows on that).

I also think there is a difference simply because most people are socialised into the idea that men initiate sex and women don't. I know this isn't universal, but if you look at what's happening with teensex, girls are being socialised pretty early into roles that give them less power and choice than the men they're having sex with.

15 year old girls are much more likely to already have been sexually abused than boys, and thus already have unclear boundaries around sex and what's ok and what's not.

So that's all about populations. I agree with you that any individual might not fit with any of that, and I certainly agree that we need an updated idea of modern masculinity (care to propose some?).

IMO a fifteen year old having sex deserves the protection of the law. Some 15 year olds will be capable of making good choices and some won't, so all should be protected. However there is one final reason why girls deserve additional protection: quite simply, they can get pregnant. Whatever impact that might have on a fifteen year old boy (getting a woman pregnant), the impact on the teen girl's life of being pregnant, and the impact on the *unplanned child* mean that this is a much more serious situation.

Let me be clear here - I'm not saying that 15yr old boys' needs for legal protection are less important. I just think they are different, and while it's easy to write off people treating those differences as being based on a myth, I think for many it's just as much about the fears associated with 15 yr old pregnant girls.

I see post one is now hidden. Are you going to ask for a reason Tiggy? Or repost with [blank] bits so we can understand the moderation decision better?

"It contains material that is potentially libellous or defamatory."

I was careful only to repeat facts from the national newspaper coverage. I'll try again:

So a teacher, in a position of trust, over a three month period, took a child aged 15 to hotels, allegedly for sex. The teacher has admitted taking the child away without lawful authority, and the unlawful sex charges have been dropped.

The teacher's father is a former British ambassador, and their stepfather is an accountant working Luxembourg, where the teacher now lives.

The teacher had previously been ordered to stay away from the child, but continued the relationship in defiance of the order.

No remand in custody. Dropped charges. In an atmosphere where paedophiles are more reviled than Nazis, how is this possible?

Take a guess.

I've added the single word "allegedly" to make my repeat of the national newspaper coverage of this story entirely accurate. She admits abducting the boy illegally and taking him to hotel rooms. She is only alleged to have done so in order to have sex with him. The charges relating to the sex have been dropped due to no realistic chance of a conviction due, cryptically, to "matters that would need to be disclosed to the court about the 15-year-old boy".

There.

Suppressed evidence is a big issue and it's very hard to judge things we don't know about. If the CPS can't make a case there's no point in them trying. It seems more likely that this is the reason for the dropped charges than the fact that the accused is a hot chick. Honestly, I don't believe that your CPS would consider a 27 yr old woman having sex with a 15 year old boy to not be an offence and if they could they would charge her.

I could be wrong of course, there could be all sorts of politics involved in the decision.

I'm more gobsmacked that she's been allowed to leave the country.

the main witness for the prosecution would be the boy himself, if he refused to give evidence or even offered to perjure himself, to help her( because he loves her and shes hot and he will be 16 in a few months and be legal) then the CPS would have little chance of securing a conviction at the end of a costly trial, they have her bang to rights on the supposed kidnapping, but again if the boy testified that he went to meet her and not went WITH her then that casts some doubt, this sounds like an arranged plea bargain, i note they have left the charges on the sex offences open so that if she ends up in court again they can resurect the case and maybe the boy WILL tastify against her then!!!

"So a teacher, in a position of trust....."

This was my interpretation at first, but on second reading I wasn't so sure. She's a "ballet teacher", and the 15 year old is a "pupil", but it's not entirely clear that she was his teacher, and if so, in what context. It's implied in the headline, but headlines aren't always written by the same journalist who wrote the story. Especially in the Daily Hate, the relationship between headlines and truth is casual at best.

I was under the impression that there was a specific offence about abuse of a position of trust that covered teachers, and I think, some other professions.

Any adult in a contact situation with a child is in an implicit position of trust. Whether it's a specific, legally sanctionable position is by the by.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1230882/Married-RE-teacher-Madeleine-Martin-jailed-having-sex-15-year-old-schoolboy.html

http://www.southportvisiter.co.uk/southport-news/southport-southport-news/2010/11/23/birkdale-high-teacher-hina-patel-jailed-after-sex-with-two-pupils-15-100252-27696155/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/7613350.stm

'Passing sentence Judge Peter Jacobs told her: "If this was a 35-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl no one would raise an eyebrow if he was sent to prison."'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8123374/Teacher-facing-jail-after-admitting-lesbian-affair-with-pupil.html

>>Whether it's a specific, legally sanctionable position is by the by.<<

Actually it's not by the by. If you talk to adults who were sexually abused as children by people such as priests, teachers etc, there are issues quite specific to the fact that the abuser had that particular kind of role - one of high trust in the community and where their main contact with the child was supposed to be one of helping.

>I was under the impression that there was a specific offence about abuse of a position of trust that covered teachers, and I think, some other professions.<

I know the term 'in loco parentis' is applied to a teacher and their role in relationship to a child they are teaching. I don't know how actual Law works in this area, but I'd have thought a child would invest a certain sort of trust in someone wearing such a 'hat' that they wouldn't in another context, where the adult wasn't wearing that 'hat'. If an adult is playing a certain role, and that role automatically gives a power differential, such as the control a teacher would expect to have over a child, that gives greater opportunity for abuse, because of the automatic trust a child would have in such a professional wearing a certain hat, because they would know that that person had been specifically trained for a role of dealing with minors. Relationships aren't neutral things, entirely based on age, shorn of context.

It certainly doesn't say in that article that the ballet teacher was acting as his teacher. They might have met in any situation, rendering that headline fairly irrelevant.

So yes this is a situation where a child as defined in Law is being abused by an adult. That's the black and white of it. But I think the context of how they met is important, ie whether or not she was 'in loco parentis'. I would really hope that Law would take account of that, and not just look purely at the black and white of adult/child. IMO that would make the Law an ass.

Certainly his sex and hers, shouldn't be a factor. This article gives no clear indication that that is the case.

And yes I'm also arguing this because he is 15. If he was younger that should also be taken into account obviously. Presumably Law makes some allowance about someone's age, when it comes to a sexual relationship occurring where one party is younger than the legal age of consent

In legal terms there's also the issue of parents and society trusting the teacher. I would expect that the societal role of the abuser would be taken into account during sentencing. I'm not sure if judges can take into account how a relationship started and the degree of consent of the teenager.

>>Relationships aren't neutral things, entirely based on age, shorn of context.

Exactly. The age itself is a rather arbitrary thing - why 15 and not 16 or 14? We have this current idea that under 16s shouldn't be having sex at all which is obviously not based on anything real so the issue becomes about power differentials and who has the sufficient maturity to make decisions. Pretty hard to judge via legal means though.

One of the core issues in sexual abuse of children is that adult abusers are using the child for their own sexual and power gratifications. At what point a teenager can consent to be part of that I'm not sure. I know someone who was having sex with 30 year old men when she was 17. Her emotional maturity was of a lower age than that, and she got treated pretty bloody badly in the experience which had a massive negative impact on her mental health. If she had been 18 months younger, the man could have been sent to prison. On the other hand there's obviously 15 year olds having sex with people a few years older than themselves and there's not abuse going on.

It's complex and I think until we learn to deal with the complexities we use a arbitrary law to show where the boundary line is. This doesn't serve young people very well - had the boy in the article been a day over 16 there would have been no crime.

>>
And yes I'm also arguing this because he is 15. If he was younger that should also be taken into account obviously. Presumably Law makes some allowance about someone's age, when it comes to a sexual relationship occurring where one party is younger than the legal age of consent
<<

I'm curious about this too. Someone over 15 having sex with someone under 15 used to be called statutory rape. It was a different crime than sexually abusing a child. I'm not sure if the term statutory rape is still used, and can't remember what the cut off age is between child abuse and statutory rape. I do think it should be differentiated.

the police have some discretion with sexual activity between similar aged persons having sex, where one or both is under age.

i think they use a 3 year bracket???

"the police have some discretion "

Really?

Every police blog I've read - and I've read a few - bemoans the fact that for quite a few years now, the (UK) police have practically no discretion in anything.