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Comment by jfaucett | Hacker News Reader

What is the rationale behind defining child porn age < 18? I think most would agree there is a profound difference between a 23 year old dating a 17 year old and a 50 year old having anything sexual to do with an 8 year old. There are worlds of moral difference here.

The first case is something that actually happened to a friend of mine. He was 23 and dating a 17 year old, got convicted, sent to prison, and is now labeled a sex offender for life.

Are there any countries out there that take a sane approach to this moral conundrum?

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Here's a map of age of consent per country, ranging from 12 to "must be married."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent

"Most jurisdictions have set a fixed age of consent" but also "Some jurisdictions have laws explicitly allowing sexual acts with minors under the age of consent if their partner is close in age to them."

Holy... In half of Mexico the age of consent is 12.

Just saying, I would have happily had sex with adult women from about age 6 onwards. I did have my first sexual experiences at that age, and have no regrets.

Me too, as I recall :) Maybe not six, however. More like 10 or 11.

Child marriage is legal in much of the the U.S.A.[1]:

> The search turned up cases of 12-year-old girls married in Alaska, Louisiana and South Carolina, while other states simply had categories of “14 and younger.”

Most states have no minimum age, though some have a minimum age between 14 and 17 (only two have a minimum age of 17 going by the map in the article).

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/opinion/sunday/it-was-for...

Not really. It is more complex than that. Keep reading.

You're just trying to get me to fill my search history with queries like "age of consent in Juarez" aren't you?

Lol. There is a different crime called "estupro" that applies from 12 to 18 even if consent was given.

I think most would agree there is a profound difference between a 23 year old dating a 17 year old

...or even a 17.997-year-old.

The problem is that the world is mostly continuous, not discrete, but laws try to be the latter.

Curiously, the US Army will take you at 17 (with parental consent). So you're old enough to decide to die for your country, but not old enough to decide to have sex with someone who's 23.

With parental consent, you can marry at much younger than 17 in most states.

Curious - do you need parental consent to enlist?

Only if you're 17, according to the person I was responding to.

I'm not sure about the gp comments specific case, but in many states in the US age of consent is actually much more nuanced than that. For example, in a number of states the age of consent for a female is 17 if their partner is no more than 10 years older than them at the time.

Clarification about the Army taking in 17 year olds. They aren't allowed to be deployed, since the UN takes a very dim view of child soldiers.

The UK had a problem a few years ago when they accidentally deployed some 17 year olds to Iraq.

Laws need to be objective to avoid bias and corruption. The vagueness of continuity you speak of manifests in the sentencing. Maybe the mandatory minimum for sex offender registration is too high, but the actual conviction needs to hold.

> mandatory minimum

This means a judge can't use his/her discretion to forgive, imposing extra toughness on the accused, usually in absurd ways, such as 30 years in prison for stealing a doughnut because of 2 prior similar petty theft convictions. But a Wall Street type could abuse billions of dollars and go free. I think this kind of cookie cutter justice is perverse and just serves to wage social war and fill up prisons.

By the time it comes to "conviction" it is far, far too late. By then several lives have been ruined, reputations damaged, and thousands of dollars of fees spent. To argue that the sentencing somehow fixes the inhumanity of the laws is utter rubbish.

> He was 23 and dating a 17 year old, got convicted, sent to prison, and is now labeled a sex offender for life.

What third-world country would send someone to prison for dating a 17 year old? I doubt even Iran or some other theocracy would do that. Where was this?

Dating as practiced in the Western world is illegal in Iran as far as internet searching shows me. One has to be married to have sex legally.

https://news.vice.com/article/irans-government-is-worried-th...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/29/iran-gender

That's very interesting. It looks like my doubts were too charitable.

You already know the answer - only US has something as barbaric as "sex offender registry".

That isn't true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_offender_registry#Sex_offe...

There is a difference, none of the other registries are open to the public.

And I'm not sure that any of them would put someone that pees in public in those registries

If they are the same sex then... quite a few

True, my country has laws like that too, and I am ashamed for them. Luckily, as far as I know, they aren't enforced.

Some states have a (I think it's called) Romeo and Juliet law that does in fact protect say 19yo dating 16yo or some range depending on the state.

In Canada its within 2 years for 12 (or 13?) year olds (I.e. a 10/11 year old can consent with a 12/13 year old) and within 5 years for 14/15 year olds. Though I'm not sure if that covers self distribution of cp (e.g. if a 14 year old sends some nudes to another 14 year old)

AFAIK, many countries define child porn completely separately from consensual sex, to the point where it's illegal for a minor to have nude pictures of themselves, let alone someone they legally have sex with.

My friend's grandfather was 21 and his grandmother was 15 when they first started dating. Needless to say if laws were as crazy back then as they are now my friend wouldn't exist as his grandfather would have been on a registry and in prison instead of starting a family and a 60 year long marriage.

Examples like this aren't useful or practical. Society's ethics can and do evolve over time. It's not "crazy" for someone who is 21 to not be dating someone who is 15.

You're arguing that the grandfather would have broken the law regardless of it existing, and is therefore innocent. Or that because a child was born out of this relationship, and grew just fine, that it makes it ethical and permissible in the general case. We don't know what the grandfather would have done. Time length of the relationship doesn't matter, and people often remain in dysfunctional marriages to the detriment of their own children.

This doesn't mean your friend's grandparents are bad, but that it's just an anecdote from the past that doesn't prove the rule against modern ethics regarding age of consent.

Ok well what about countries where the age of consent is and has been much lower than ours (Italy at 14, France 15, etc)? They don't seem to be suffering any negative effects although I haven't done much research into it.

I think that's a valid point to bring up and think about. We're looking at more than one person's anecdote and there's a chance of gathering real evidence for constructing public policy.

You imply that that ethics 'evolve' always in a positive and constructive direction. This is clearly false, especially with the subject matter at hand. You also link 'ethics' and 'lawfulness' which is pretty naive, at best.

I'm not sure "dating" as in "the series of social engagements shared by a couple looking to get married" will put you on a sex offenders registry even now... Of course I don't know what did your friend's grandparents did precisely when they started "dating".

> Are there any countries out there that take a sane approach to this moral conundrum?

Most of the rest of the world actually.

The weirdest thing is that we deem people as legal adults at 18.

If you look at neurological science, crime rates, and even car insurance rates then it's fairly easy to see that the brain has not fully matured by age 18 in most people.

Sure, a person's capacity for logic/reason has matured but usually that happens around 15 anyway. Inhibition of risky behavior and thus the ability to make sound decisions definitely has not.

A more sane legal adult age would probably be around 25 but then how would we justify enlisting legal 'children' in the military?

>A more sane legal adult age would probably be around 25

Depends on whether maturity is reached 25 years after birth, or 7 years after you start to make your own decisions.

> What is the rationale behind defining child porn age < 18?

The most widely ratified human rights convention, the UNCRC, defines a child as someone under 18.

While the US doesn't ratify those conventions (because constitution) they do try to put them into law. That means they enact a mish-mash of bits and pieces, and leave out quite a lot.

England does a reasonable job here. We have the law (The Sexual Offences Act 2003 covers photographs of children), and we have prosecution advice (which covers things like whether it's in the "public interest" to prosecute.) The sexual offences act has some protections for people who are over 18 but who have a vulnerability impdeding choice (eg, a learning disability) or who are in a weird power dynamic (eg university lecturers).

There are also differences in law between someone under 13 (where it's assumed the alleged offender knew they were under age) and someone between 13 and 16/18 where the crown has to prove the alleged offender knew they were under age.

English law is a bit complicated because the age of consent for sexual activity is 16. It is weird that you can fuck a 17 year old, but you can't have naked photos of that same person. There's a narrow exemption in law for possessing images for people who are under 18 and married.

Here's the sexual offences act: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/contents

Here's the Crown Prosecution Service guidance: http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/p_to_r/rape_and_sexual_offences/...

It's mostly just "18+" is considered an adult for almost all legal purposes.

California has some sanity about "statutory rape", which is what your friend almost certainly got nailed on. The number of years under 18 as well as the age difference can be taken into account, and that conviction could be reduced to a different misdemeanor. However, you need a GOOD lawyer to pull this off.

Age of consent is 16 in 30 States and 17 in 8 states

> What is the rationale behind defining child porn age < 18?

You are conflating two concepts that aren't relevant.

1) Dating and age of sexual consent have nothing to do with the legal rationale behind child pornography prohibitions.

2) Depictions of nudity of subjects under 18 do not run afoul of child pornography prohibitions (of course, contingent on if you can afford your rights all the way past appeals court)

The age in 2) is typically standardized by the federal government, and they just let people consent to contracts to exploit themselves at the age they can consent to any other contract.

>Are there any countries out there that take a sane approach to this moral conundrum?

Almost all of them? Heck, 23-17? I don't even see the conundrum at all.

> What is the rationale behind defining child porn age < 18?

This is actually known (as to the USA). When the law was passed, pornography producers didn't have to keep records of their models. The goal of setting the legal threshold at 18 was to make it really, really easy to convince a jury that a model who was e.g. 12 was below the legal threshold. It wasn't expected that photos of 16-year-olds would be prevented, because if all you're going on is a photo, they aren't easy to distinguish from 18-year-olds.

Got a cite?

The rationale is the age of majority. As a parent, I have a right to control the influences in my daughter's life - save for some exceptions around mandatory education and maintaining basic health. That means whom she associates with, and how images of her taken are used save for those taken of her while in public and not under duress of compulsion. Why is that so hard to understand?

Children in various age groups have numerous rights that go far above education and health care in many countries, from the right to privacy to things like religious freedom. Saying that parents should have full control over their children's sex life until they reach the full age of majority is certainly controversial.

Teenagers also have the right to live lives that allow them to experience the world on their own terms and to learn from their experiences. Overly controlling parenting is ultimately detrimental to teenagers' development. Why is that so hard to understand?

That may be part of good parenting, but teenagers simply do not have that as a "right". The OP asked simply "What is the rationale behind defining child porn age < 18?" I gave the rationale, and people are jumping to all sorts of conclusions about the day to day reality of how I raise children. The law in these matters is about objectively boundaries.

Perhaps the age of majority ought to be changed, perhaps the placement of all convicted on the registry ought to be lifted, perhaps the record ought to be sealed if good behavior can be maintained for X number of years, but these are all "oughts".

Write to your legislators and put your morality into law if you want to see changes. Don't ask judges to use their discretion and open the door to widespread Brock Turner justice.

So you outsource your parenting to the police and the courts?

I absolutely agree that you have a right to control the influences in your kids' lives (to some extent, at least). But why do you need to involve the law in this way?

Say your daughter receives a lewd photo from an underage male. Now she's in possession of child porn (whether she wanted the photo or not) and could end up on a sex offender registry for life. How is that sane?

And the guy who sent her the picture is "trafficking in child pornography"? C'mon. That's ridiculous.

Many of these crimes are on the book with "strict liability"; that is, the mere fact of existence or possession triggers culpability, and intent doesn't enter into the equation.

I think the better model is in places where the age of consent is at some reasonable age below the age of majority (no, I don't have a good definition for "reasonable", but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try), as it is in many places. There are no legal ramifications of sexual behavior down to that age, but parents are, as always, free to set limits and impose consequences if they aren't obeyed.

But if she sends an indecent photo of herself to a (similarly aged)boyfriend should she be put on a sex offenders list for the rest of her life for distribution of child pornography?

That seems excessive. And it's hard for me to empathize with any parent who thinks that's ok.

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