I agree totally. I definitely think that there needs to be a defence of reasonable mistake rather than statutory rape being a strict liability defence in the interests of justice. As you quite rightly pointed out, if a man is in a bar after a certain time and a young girl is there it would not be unreasonable for him to believe that she was over the legal drinking age and therefore - consent.
But this issue can't be dealt with in isolation. There needs to be a serious discussion on the laws of the age of consent too. It's about time that people (be they politicians) or whoever acknowledge that young teenagers have sex. Would it then not be better to develop a system of consent laws where you could not criminalise two 14 or 15 year olds who consent to having sex (or by virtue of McDowell's legislation just the male) rather than continuing the myth that teenagers don't (or shouldn't) have sex?
Well said Chris. I remember yourself and I discussing this issue a while back.
The reality is that a lot of people are willing to lie about their age in order to hook up with someone. If a man is mislead by an underage girl then there's no way he ought to face prison for that. These things need to be carefully assessed. Whole thing reminds me of that Chris Rock skit:
"If a woman tells you she's 20, and looks 16...she's 12.
If she tells you she's 26, and looks 26...she's damn near 40."
FG are indeed 100% unfit for office.
I'm ashamed that Shatter got elected in Dublin South. Quite apart from issues of family law, he supports the current destruction of Gaza. Shame on him.
"If a man is mislead by an underage girl then there's no way he ought to face prison for that. "
I think it's very important to be clear though about the defence of mistake. Just because an underage girl may "mislead" a man does not mean that he should be able to avail of a defence by virtue of the fact that she mislead him - he must have actually made the mistake. If she looks 14 and it wasn't reasonable for him to have made that mistake in those circumstances, the defence should not apply.
Commenting by HaloScan
