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Age of consent
Like it or not people are having sex under age 17.
The sentencing of a young man to 11 months in jail for having sex with his girlfriend, who was under the age of consent, has huge consequences for the majority of young people in Ireland.
The remarkable thing is that although the judge accepted that the young man believed the age of consent was 16, he still sentenced him to 11 months in prison.
The topic has been hotly debated in recent months after a Cambridge professor controversially suggested that the age of consent in the UK (which is 16) should be lowered. The fact is that having 17 as the age of consent In Ireland ignores reality.
Like it or not, people are having sex younger than 17, and instead of protecting young people the law is instead criminalising them. The age of consent does not stop young people under the age of 17 having sex, and contrary to belief it does not remove the pressure to have sex, and it definitely does not prevent sexual abuse.
So what does it actually do? Well, it criminalises the thousands of young people who are having consensual sex. If the point of the age of consent is to protect Ireland’s young people; than it has failed.
At the moment, legal experts will tell you that it is a grey area, so if people educated in the law are confused, how is the average young person supposed to understand such a complicated issue? According to an article by Carol Coulter of The Irish Times; while last February there was talk of the age of consent being lowered, the DPP told the Oireachtas committee that his office rarely prosecuted issues of non – coercive sex between teenagers of a similar age.
He said in practise he, nor his predecessor, had prosecuted such cases and that the cases that were persecuted since the introduction of the 2006 sexual offences act was a gap of six years or more in almost 85 per cent of the cases. So why all of a sudden has a judge in Mullingar decided to prosecute the young man when thousands of others have escaped?
The conviction handed down to the young man is harsh - he truly believed he was not committing a crime - and if you were to ask the majority of young people in Ireland the majority of them would say that 16 is the age of consent due to a lack of sexual education, and the influence of UK TV programmes and magazines where they are told the age of consent is 16.
This conviction will have drastic consequences for the young man. It will affect his career, his travelling abroad - he won’t be allowed into the US, and he may even have his name added to the sex offenders list. But it will also have drastic consequences for the thousands of young people in Ireland who are deemed criminals. If the government is determined to ensure that young people will be prosecuted for having underage sex - is it not their responsibility to ensure that all young people are informed and educated about the legal implications of having underage sex?
The fact is that Ireland has one of the highest age of consents in Europe. In twenty EU countries the age of consent is lower than 16. In Malta and Spain it is 13, 15 in France and Poland and 14 in Germany, Portugal and Italy. Now, I’m not suggesting that we drop it to 13, but I do believe 16 is a more realistic age. One must ask the question as to why has Ireland chosen 17 as the magic age to have sex? If emotional and sexual maturity is the reason, then it does not resolve the problem as people mature at different ages. Instead of persecuting young people for their ignorance around sexual law - why are we not ensuring that they are educated and provided with good quality sex education and relationship advice.
The problem with criminalising young people for having sex is that it will prevent them from seeking information around sexually transmitted diseases and contraception as they are scared of being prosecuted. So, instead of providing advice to help young people through an often difficult time in their life when they are making relationship choices and decisions around their sexuality; we are instead isolating them and forcing them to make uninformed choices and decisions on their own, on a subject matter that most adults struggle with.
It also leaves teachers and people who work with young people afraid to give information around sex as they will be afraid of being drawn into promoting criminal behaviour. So, the big question is how are young people to know about the age of consent if they are subjected to a flawed sexual health education? One must also ask if the girl had been 19 and the boy was 16 would the case have gone to court? I doubt it, so why are young men being discriminated against?
One solution to the debate, would be to ensure that young people who do have sex under 17 would not be prosecuted providing the sex is consensual and there is no more than two to three years of an age gap between the couple.
The time has come for a frank and open discussion about the age of consent. Young people have the right to this debate, as it is something that obviously has a huge effect on their future. In the eyes of the law, all these people are criminals, and lumped together with paedophiles. How is this just?
It is about time that Ireland took a step out of the darkness and provides good quality sexual health education that is more complex than the chapter on the reproductive system in Biology. The Mullingar case has highlighted the fact that the age of consent does not prevent people having sex at a younger age, but instead simply makes them criminals in the eyes of the law.
By: Marie Duffy
