Two 17-year-old football players at Torrington (Conn.) High School have been charged in connection with the statutory rape of two 13-year-old girls, the (Litchfield County, Conn.) Register-Citizen reports.
As has been seen in similar cases, where high school athletes prey on young girls, who are, by virtue of their age, legally unable to consent to sex, other students at the school have shown support for the accused boys and written comments against the girls that resemble cyberbullying on Twitter. The administration at the high school has asked students to stop the name-calling, but officials’ concurrent request to focus on the positive side of Torrington High School has brought predictable resistance from students.
Nevada State Health Division poster to educate young men about statutory rape
The age of consent in Connecticut is 16. That means a child under 16 years of age is unable to consent to sexual intercourse when the other person is more than 2 years older than him or her. However, sexual contact with someone less than 15 years of age, as allegedly occurred in the case in Torrington, is illegal regardless of the age of the defendant. Laws in other states vary.
A great deal of attention in this case has been paid to online behavior: blaming the victims, characterizing them as promiscuous “hoes,” entitling athletes to sex with young girls, and promoting the #FreeEdgar hashtag, which refers to one of the two boys accused. One Twitter post called one of the girls a “snitch” and said she had ruined the lives of the accused boys. “Young girls acting like whores there’s no punishment for that, young men acting like boys is a sentence,” said another post, which seemed to imply the girls who were victimized were just as guilty as the boys who preyed on them in this case.
We consider these online behaviors to be simple reflections of teens’ attitudes toward statutory rape. It does little good, we think, to enforce standards of online behavior when teens’ attitudes serve only to blame the victims and encourage statutory rape among high school athletes.
How to help
Those who hope to help in Torrington or anyplace where statutory rape seems to prevail among teens, especially high school athletes in popular programs, need to educate themselves about statutory rape, experts say. Sometimes this involves “remembering what it was like” as a teenager in these circumstances.
“Adolescent years are filled with physical, mental, and emotional changes. Adolescents are no longer children and are not yet adults. Educate yourself on how teens communicate and think. Although each teen is unique, the underlying causes of frustration, communication, and decision-making derive from the physiological and emotional development of adolescence,” says the website for a cooperative project of the Office on Violence Against Women and the Minnesota Center Against Violence & Abuse at the University of Minnesota.
The majority of advice intended for adults, though, says to learn the law and provide resources for teens so they properly understand the law. Many states publish campaigns about statutory rape or sex with individuals who are too young to give legal consent. These programs, such as ShesNotOldEnough.com from the Nevada State Health Division, whose poster is reprinted above, provide posters, pamphlets, and other educational materials that deal with prevention.
Rape is a crime. It is not justified by entitlement or participation in an athletic program at some high school. There’s a reason pretty, young girls are known as “jail bait.” Cyberbullying is also becoming a crime in many states.
If you break these laws and are prosecuted as an adult, you can go to prison. In addition, you may have to register as a sex offender for the rest of your life. Learn the law! Teach it to others!
