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Woman\'s sex with boy, 13, causes row

I wonder how many people who've heard of this article are thinking about how "lucky" he is...

From the article under discussion:

"According to the Crimes Act it is illegal for a man to have sexual intercourse with children of either sex aged under 16. It is also illegal for a woman aged 21 or over to take part in any indecent act with girls aged under 16."

Boys gain protection from older women only when there is a special relationship, such as mother and son, sister and brother, teacher and pupil or doctor and patient.

Christchurch crown prosecutors are preparing a case against a 47-year-old woman charged with two representative counts of sexually violating a boy from the age of 11 during the 1990s.

Crown prosecutor Jane Farish said only one part of the Crimes Act covered sex between women and boys, and the issue was consent. In order for the charge to be proved prosecutors had to show that the boy did not consent and that the woman knew or believed that was the case.

These are such sickening double standards!

With men sex with minors of either age is wrong, but with women only sex with minor females is wrong. To me such a law only contributes to the deliquency & later adult criminal activities of male minors.

It is also disgusting that only with sex between an adult female & a minor male is a matter of consent. Not to mention that they can judge a 13 year old as actually being consensual with an adult woman.

:rolleyes:

Victor

Did anyone else read last week about one of the very small islands that is under N.Z. control where about a fifth of the male population have been arrested for child sex offences ?

It was a very small mention in our papers and I forgot to check it further.

Dave

No Dave I'd not heard about that. Wonder if that island was part of one of the old penal/prison colonies of that neck of the woods. Or if it's just a place easy for perps to hide in, maybe worse a place that harbors them deliberately.

Of course they wouldn't be the only place doing that...

Gotta wonder what the percentage is in some of these other countries I won't name. In some of them, one-fifth wouldn't surprise me in the least.


Still, we gotta remember the percentage of those who don't perpetrate, those who help survivors, those of us who bravely survive. Those are the ones really worth remembering.

Victor

Hi Guys with reference to SA in NZ.

I thought this may shed some light on the last two messages asked for by Lloydy (see you Tuesday) :p

Sexual abuse charges to be laid against 20 Pitcairners

PM - Wednesday, July 17, 2002 18:14

COMPERE: Serious trouble is brewing on tiny Pitcairn Island, the place made famous by the Bounty mutineer, Fletcher Christian, who established a colony there in 1790.

After a three year investigation, police are set to lay sexual abuse charges against approximately 20 Pitcairn Islanders, nearly half the community's population.

Pitcairn Island is about halfway between New Zealand and South America, and as New Zealand Correspondent Gillian Bradford reports, there have been long delays in charging the men, because no one can decide where the case should be tried.

GILLIAN BRADFORD: Pitcairn Island is one of the last outposts of the British Empire. It’s so remote, islanders rely on the New Zealand airport to drop off the mail and other supplies. Daily contact with the outside world comes down to ham radio.

Time has to a degree stood still for the 44 islanders, all descendants of Fletcher Christian and the crew of the Bounty, who mutinied and set their Captain, William Bligh, adrift in the Pacific.

The British Government has been content to leave the island well enough alone for the past 200 years and attempts to establish tourism have largely failed.

But in the last few years a sinister tale has emerged from the tiny island. First came an allegation from a woman that she’d been raped. Police from England and New Zealand took the complaint seriously and hitched a ride on a container ship from Auckland to make the five day trip to interview her. What they discovered couldn’t have been more disturbing. Allegations of sexual abuse were also made by a number of women and girls, against 20 men on the island.

The crown solicitor of Auckland, Simon Moore, who’s also the crown solicitor for Pitcairn Island, had this to say about the case in July last year.

SIMON MOORE: It’s the most unusual thing I’ve ever been involved in.

GILLIAN BRADFORD: But 12 months on, and still no charges have been laid against the men. The British High Commission in New Zealand has confirmed the prosecutor has decided to lay charges, but admits it’s the British holding up the process.

The reason, Britain doesn’t want to compromise its sovereignty over Pitcairn Island.

For months the British have been deciding where to hold the trial so the case can still be heard under English law. Holding the trial in Pitcairn while legally possible would obviously present huge logistical difficulties. New Zealand, which seems like the logical option, is also not suitable because it would have to change its laws to enable a foreign state to conduct a trial on kiwi soil.

So until the British decide where they’re going to charge these men, the public prosecutor has his hands tied and the women on Pitcairn continue to live with uncertainty.

A spokesman for the British High Commission in Wellington can’t say if his government is close to making a decision, but he did confirm officials from the British Foreign Office are in Auckland working on plans to stage a trial.

It rang some bells with me so I thought I'd follow it up after seeing the question asked.

And all that was left was hope

Regards

Kirk