A 26 year old teacher was jailed this week for having underage sex with a pupil at a school in England. Whilst the judge admitted that the relationship was consensual, he decided to punish the teacher, but said that both she and the pupil should be allowed to continue seeing each other. It seems there is a grey patch concerning under age sex, and the vagueness of the sentence reflects a nation’s ambiguity over what constitutes as “illegal”.

The “legislative overkill” surrounding under age sex is getting way out of hand, says John Spencer, professor of law at Selwyn College. Britain currently has the worst underage sex rates in the whole of Europe, despite having one of the highest ages of consent. This surely means that something is going wrong. Many argue that laws designed to protect children are too general, and criminalise otherwise normal teen age behaviour. The draconian style rules laid down by the 2003 Sexual Offences Act were meant to “modernise Victorian” laws on sex offences and provide a coherent and impartial system that ensured child protection whilst enforcing harsher punishments upon offenders. Instead these new laws contrive only to vilify half of the teenage population, and instead of protecting, it serves only as an unrealistic aim served out by a government that is far out of touch with the younger generations. At the moment teenagers are completely oblivious to any laws regarding underage sex, and those that are aware of them, do not care in the slightest if they break them. Many argue that if under age sex was to be legalised, teens would be less inclined to commit it, because it wouldn’t be “cool” anymore, however in my opinion, this would do little to hamper teenage behavioural patterns. Instead of criminalisation, the government should be concentrating on education. Going into schools and teaching the disadvantaged about the consequences of their actions is what government spending should be focused on. The right to express yourself and experiment with sex is something that every teenager deserves, and they should not be afraid of breaking the law whilst doing so.

The act of 2003 criminalises consensual sex between children, no matter how freely or enthusiastically they consent to what is being done. Not only do they make it a crime for 2 consenting young people to have full intercourse, they make it illegal for any persons under the age of 16 to even kiss. Of course we must punish paedophiles, but we must do so without hitting out at younger persons at the same time. How can teens be expected to respect the law if it bans stupid things like this? There must be a stronger implementation of the law in schools.

Of course many believe that the laws should be made harsher still, but unless we educate children about sex, they will continue to disobey.

by George Steer