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

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Do people really think this has stopped? Do you think the queues of lassies desperate to get backstage to "meet" the latest teenybop idol are turned away or asked for proof of id?

14/15 year old girls will always try to shag "stars" or those they imagine are close to the "stars" and if this Police section start digging around musicians the brown stuff is *really* going to hit the fan.

Yep, sad but true.

Has the mystique really dropped since then?

As far as I can tell the cult of celebrity is stronger than ever - the TV is stuffed full of programmes with 'celebrities' who've not actually even done anything other than be famous?
Also, being a pornstar seems to be significant ambition of quite a large section of the youth of today as far as I can gather.

This stuff is probably just as widespread as ever.

Also, it doesn't matter how many laws you pass. There will always be a-holes out there .

'The whole witch-hunt is ludicrous. Seems to me like this police unit is just trying to justify its existence now. There's no way in hell any sexual allegation can be proven to have occurred or not occurred 45 years ago. It's just money and fame-seekers trying their luck. Honestly, 19bluddy67 '

hysterical that, Winnoch, has been proved, as Hoo pointed out

'Also, being a pornstar seems to be significant ambition of quite a large section of the youth of today as far as I can gather'

Where the hell did you get that from Orcus?

>>Also, being a pornstar seems to be significant ambition of quite a large section of the youth of today as far as I can gather<<

He could have had a conversation with some of my students: a good number of them seem to want nothing else. Sex ed has become teaching them porn isn't real sex.

Quite - I think I originally saw a comment along those lines in Southpark of all places but I have seen it since backed up by commentary and polling in a UK broadsheet - but I haven't seen definitive surveys and I can't link as it was ages ago. But I've seen it referred to in way too many places for it to be not-believable sadly.

In the immoratal words of social commentator Lilly Allen:

"And I'll take my clothes off and it will be shameless

'Cuz everyone knows that's how you get famous

I'll look at the sun and I'll look in the mirror

I'm on the right track, yeah I'm on to a winner"

'proven' is a strong word peanut. And he is just one person; his admission doesn't automatically make everyone else who has been accused, guilty.

This is astonishing -

"A prominent barrister specialising in reproductive rights has called for the age of consent to be lowered to 13. Barbara Hewson told online magazine Spiked that the move was necessary in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal to end the "persecution of old men".

She argues for an end to complainant anonymity, a strict statute of limitations to prevent prosecutions after a substantial amount of time has passed and a reduction in the age of consent to 13."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22459815

That just beggars belief and shows a complete disregard of victims and survivors.

we have to be realistic here. In some countries the age of consent is 13 (Spain? The Netherlands?) BUT the proviso is that it is only legal to have sex with someoene who is 13 if you are no more than 2 years older than them. And that applies until you're 18 here in Germany as far as I know.

Which means that we get realistic about the fact that what teenagers want is sex and that they aren't going to wait for any arbitrary age to pass because they know from watching adults that what people seem to want more than anything is sex. And lots of it. (because why have the money and power? because it enables you to have lots of sex)

And it doesn't cater to the dispicable suggestion that we should do it to protect dirty old men (or women for that matter)

Hi Winnoch, missed that post,sorry.

I meant that cases can be proven even after such a long time. I wasn't implying anyone elses guilt, other than those who have been found guilty

I don't think it would be right to have the investigation closed down until they feel that they have done investigating and there is a lot to get through

Characterising the investigation as a 'ludicrous witch hunt' and saying that people who are coming forward are just 'fame seekers' is a comment that I find extreme and lacks understanding of the wider issues.

Which is not just about the investigation it is about how we, as individuals and a society respond to the information that we are being given.

That works both ways.

I don't say that everyone arrested is guilty, maybe you could acknowledge that not everyone who is reporting is attention seeking and making stuff up?

Barbera Hewson's comments do just beggar belief as swl says.

I think though that I would support a lowering of the age of consent to 14, with the age scales that Sho says up to 18.

It reflects a reality that young people become sexually active before 16 and would mean that young people could legally get advice, access to health services independently.

Also it offers an additional framework of protection to 16-18 years old

on the other hand, of course, there are 14 year olds (and younger) at it like rabbits, and I worry that if the age of consent were lowered then even younger children might start.

But I do like those uilt in protections.

Physical and other development varies greatly in teenagers, you're never going to stop the young having sex due curiousity, rebellion and peer pressure so I don't see the need to change the "age of consent" Protecting young or vulnerable people from predators isn't something that should have a finite age range.

if you make it legal, with the provisos given above, I think you can give them a little more protection. Because a predatory paedophile won't be stopped anyway, but maybe an 18 year old with a 15 year old girlfriend, if they are discussing it in a grown up way that a lot of teenagers do, will probably pay attention to that.

Dunno. There are lots of laws that are broken almost routinely - speeding, littering, underage drinking etc etc. We don't abandon the laws in these cases despite the number of offences because we as a society don't want people speeding, dropping litter or imbibing drugs whilst their bodies are still developing.

If the desirable outcome of lowering the age of consent is better sexual health and less unwanted pregnancies *those* are the areas that should be addressed. I think if we give tacit approval to 14 year old girls having sex we'll inevitably see more young girls missing out on education and being disadvantaged for the rest of their lives.

Part of being a responsible parent/society member is not giving kids everything they want whenever they want it, no?

Part of being a responsible society is acknowledging that things have changed and that just by wanting teenagers not to (want to) have sex won't make it happen.

There are no easy answers. After all, if we look at drinking, for eg, as far as I remember from my teenage years, if you roughly looked 18 you were ok in a pub. So the 18 age tended to mean that 16 year-olds were drinking which isn't really desireable, but better than having 16 as the age and having 14 year olds doing it. In that respect, raising the age of consent to 18 or 21 makes more sense.

But on the other hand, sex does tend to be done in private and therefore it's harder to control. And we also know that no matter how well parents bring up their children, there are always circumstances when young teenagers will want to try sex. It is fun, it does feel good and we like doing it. Teenagers of whatever age simply can't understand why they shouldn't be allowed to do what the rest of us do as a matter of course.

We need to talk about it a lot more. Much much more. But above all we have to make it clear that if an adult (or anyone, really) touches you or speaks to you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe - that there are people that teenagers and children can talk to and that it is not their fault that those things happen to them. That the person doing the touching is wrong no matter what they may say. And that we will try to keep them safe. I think we are making progress on this. It is like votes for women or racial equality: it will come but it does come exceedingly slowly.

If we had taken this kind of attitude in the 60s (or earlier) people like Stuart Hall (a 9 year old for bod's sakes - she was 9!) wouldn't have managed to have access to so many young girls.

It's all just such a mess.

As for anonymity and the presumption of innocence: of course, I would prefer anonymity for Hall, Saville and the rest. On the other hand, given how difficult it is to bring cases like this to justice, if only one victim was brave enough to come forward, it wouldn't be taken seriously. So if the names are out there the others know that it is (finally) being taken seriously. But - it's a freaking minefield.

I'm not sure about the naming of those arrested.

Saville lost his rights to anonyminity when he died and it was that that opened a kind of floodgate

It seems to be the fact that because the issue seriously and that people are feeling that they will be listened too and taken seriously has been the more important factor in information being forth coming
and being processed.

I think it would be ok for both parties to have a right to anonyminity

"I think it would be ok for both parties to have a right to anonyminity"

This is quite a bizarre position to take up, given recent events.

Don't get me wrong - as a result of the appalling treatment of Austin Donnellan (google him) I used to feel strongly that this was the case.

The argument against anonymity for defendants has always been "if it's publicised, other victims may come forward who would not otherwise". I have a couple of problems with that argument. First of all, for people like poor Mr. Donnellan (and it's scandalous and wrong that I know his name), the argument is specious. There is not now and never was the suggestion or even the suspicion that he was some sort of serial predator and there was a slew of victims keeping quiet only because they were frightened or ashamed or whatever. His life was ruined (twenty years on and you can still google him and find out that he was "that man", and all about his unfortunate dalliance with the woman who accused him, including how after a trial lasting over a week it took the jury less than an hour to acquit him...), but his accuser remains anonymous, free to go about her life unencumbered by the stigma of having been "that woman". Other, similar trials from around that time had similar outcomes - stupid or vindictive women putting men through trials which, when the details were gone through in court, were self-evidently cases that should never have been brought.

The other thing I used to think was "well, if the other victims don't come forward, that's their lookout. You cannot complain that a crime isn't punished if you don't report it."

However, Operation Yewtree has uncovered what seems to be rapidly becoming an avalanche of cases where individual victims have only come forward because, in the context of other accusations, they feel they are more likely to be believed. Previously, they (perhaps rightly, perhaps not) felt that their accusations would be dismissed.

I am far from comfortable with the publicity given to these cases, because it would be very easy for there to be another Austin Donnellan, and it could be me. There's a certain class of feminist who believes that all accused rapists are guilty REGARDLESS OF THE FINDINGS OF A JURY who had been presented with all the evidence (google "Siwan Hayward" - the phrase "women don't lie about rape" should chill the blood of any man). Such people are on the level of Westboro Baptists in my opinion.

But the alternative - that predatory serial abusers in positions of privilege should be able to escape justice because their dozens or hundreds of victims each thinks they're the only one - is definitely worse.

I don't know how to fix it. My saloon-bar-chat solution would be that in any case where a rape trial or appeal results in acquittal, there's an *immediate* arrest and charge for the anonymous accuser, who remains anonymous through their trial for malicious accusation. In the event they're found to have made their accusation "in good faith", or whatever, well, fine, they remain anonymous and everyone moves on. In the event they're found to have made their accusation negligently or maliciously, they're named and imprisoned. I think that might focus minds somewhat. Stats on false accusations are notoriously hard to come by, but one thing we can be absolutely sure of is that, despite the nonsense bleated by scum like Siwan Hayward, the false accusation rate is NOT zero.

To my mind, making a negligent or malicious false accusation of rape should be absolutely equally as abhorrent to society as rape itself. The tiny minority of women who do it are poisoning the well for the vast majority whose accusations are true - every single time an accusation is shown to be false and malicious, it gives ammunition to those who spread the idea that MOST accusation are false and malicious. I've never really understood why it is that anti-rape campaigners aren't angrier about those few women who make the false claims (other than the fact that being angry with a woman - no matter how evil and misogynist that woman's actions - would put them in a difficult position ideologically).

In conclusion, though - no anonymity for the accused. Recent events have shown only too clearly that keeping their victims in the dark is what enabled these people to keep doing what they were doing for DECADES. And it's only the publicity, the naming of these people, and the publicity around the sheer scale of what they were up to, that has empowered their victims finally to come forward.