Age of consent
Charges and penalties resulting from a breach of these laws may range from a misdemeanor, such as 'corruption of a minor', to what is popularly called statutory rape.
[2] In traditional societies, the age of consent for a sexual union was a matter for the family to decide, or a tribal custom.
In England, for example, the only reliable data in the early modern period comes from property records made after death.
Modern historians have sometimes shown reluctance to accept evidence of young ages of marriage, dismissing it as a 'misreading' by a later copier of the records.
[7] The first recorded age-of-consent law in Europe dates from 1275 in England; as part of its provisions on rape, the Statute of Westminster 1275 made it a misdemeanor to "ravish" a "maiden within age," whether with or without her consent.
Portugal, Spain, Denmark and the Swiss cantons initially set the minimum age at ten to twelve years.
[8] English common law had traditionally set the age of consent within the range of ten to twelve years old, but the Offences Against the Person Act 1875 raised this to thirteen in Great Britain and Ireland.
Early feminists of the Social Purity movement, such as Josephine Butler and others, instrumental in securing the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, began to turn towards the problem of child prostitution by the end of the 1870s.
Sensational media revelations about the scourge of child prostitution in London in the 1880s then caused outrage among the respectable middle-classes, leading to pressure for the age of consent to be raised again.
The investigative journalist William Thomas Stead of the Pall Mall Gazette was pivotal in exposing the problem of child prostitution in the London underworld through a publicity stunt.
He then published a series of four exposés entitled The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, which shocked its readers with tales of child prostitution and the abduction, procurement, and sale of young English virgins to Continental "pleasure palaces".
Fearing riots on a national scale, the Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt, pleaded in vain with Stead to cease publication of the articles.
A wide variety of reform groups held protest meetings and marched together to Hyde Park demanding that the age of consent be raised.
The government was forced to propose the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, which raised the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen and clamped down on prostitution.
[8][15] In France, Portugal, Denmark, the Swiss cantons and other countries, the minimum age was raised to between thirteen and sixteen years in the following decades.
[8] Though the original arguments for raising the age of consent were based on morality, since then the raison d'être of the laws has changed to child welfare and a so-called right to childhood or innocence.
[23][24][25] In the 21st century, concerns about child sex tourism and commercial sexual exploitation of children gained prominence, resulting in legislative changes in multiple jurisdictions, as well as the adoption of international laws.
[27] The Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (which came into force in 2008) also deals with commercial sexual exploitation of children.
Often, enforcement is not exercised to the letter of the law, with legal action being taken only when a sufficiently socially-unacceptable age gap exists between the two individuals, or if the perpetrator is in a position of power over the minor (e.g. a teacher, minister, or doctor).
[35][36] Another approach takes the form of a stipulation that sexual intercourse between a minor and an older partner is legal under the condition that the latter does not exceed a certain age.
[38] In Slovenia, the age of consent is 15, but the activity is only deemed criminal if there is "a marked discrepancy between the maturity of the perpetrator and that of the victim".
[39] Some jurisdictions, such as the Bahamas, UK overseas territory of the Cayman Islands, Paraguay and Suriname have a higher age of consent for same-sex sexual activity.
[40] In June 2019, the Canadian government repealed the section of the criminal code that set a higher age of consent for anal intercourse.
[41] In some jurisdictions (such as Indonesia[42]), there are different ages of consent for heterosexual sexual activity that are based on the gender of each person.
Traditionally, age of consent laws regarding vaginal intercourse were often meant to protect the chastity of unmarried girls.
This means that in some legal systems, issues of women having sexual contact with underage partners were rarely acknowledged.
For example, until 2000, in the UK, before the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000, there was no statutory age of consent for lesbian sex.
[66] The age of exposure has an influence upon if the immune system can fend off infections in general, and this is also true in the case of some sexually transmitted diseases.
