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Introduction, Page 1 - 5 / Helmut Graupner JD, Vern L Bullough RN, PhD, DSci
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The 17-Year-Old Child: An Absurdity of the Late 20th Century, Page, 7 - 24 / Helmut
Graupner JD
Recently enacted EU-legislation will affect interferences with the sexual life of
adolescents across Europe in an intensity so far not known in any of the European
states. The _Framework-Directive on combating sexual exploitation of children and
child-pornography_ will oblige all member States of the European Union to create extensive
offences of _child_-pornography and _child_-prostitution, defining as _child_ every
person up to 18 years of age, without differentiating between five-year-old children
and 17-year-old juveniles. These offences go far beyond combating child pornography
and child prostitution, thus making a wide variety of adolescent sexual behaviour,
hitherto completely legal in the overwhelming majority of jurisdictions in Europe,
serious crimes; for instance: sex between 16-year-olds for _remuneration_, which includes
invitations to cinema or to a dinner; _lascivious_ drawings of a 17-year-old girl
possessed by a 15-year-old boy; photographs of a 16 year-old girl in her bikini _lasciviously_
exposing her pubic area, taken by her 17-year-old boyfriend on the beach; standard
pornography involving younger looking 20-year-old adults or _webcam-sex_ between 17-year-old-adolescents;
even pictures of one's own adult spouse in _lascivious_ poses, if this spouse looks
younger than 18. No European jurisdiction so far has such a restrictive law. The massive
criminalisation and the equation of adolescents with children caused heavy criticisms
among experts but this criticism could not prevent the project from becoming law.
This essay provides an analysis of the background, the legislative process and the
content of the EU-Framework-Decision.
Keywords: youth protection, youth rights, sexual offenses, age of consent, sexual
consent, sexual violence, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, child sexual abuse, paedophilia,
ephephilia, child pornography, child prostitution, youth pornogaphy, youth prositution,
juvenile prostitution, criminal law, human rights, European Union, European Law
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Age of Consent: A Historical Overview, Page 25 - 42 / Vern L Bullough RN, PhD, DSci
Age of Consent throughout history has usually coincided with the age of puberty although
at sometimes it has been as early as seven. Early on age of consent was a familial
or tribal matter and only became a legal one in the Greco-Roman period. The Roman
tradition served as the base for Christian Europe as well as the Christian Church
itself which generally, essentially based upon biological development, set it at 12
or 14 but continued to set the absolute minimum at seven. In the past century there
has been a tendency to raise the age of consent but the reasons for the change have
not always been clear and the issue has been further complicated by the reluctance
of many contemporary historians to recognize what the actual age of consent in the
past has been. This failure has distorted the importance of biology on age of consent
in the past.
Keywords: age of consent, sexual content, age of marriage, statutory rape, sexual
violence, sexual abuse, child sexual abuse, paedophilia, ephebophilia, adolescent-adult
relations, sex history, legal history, biology
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Adolescent American Sex, Page 43 - 53 / David Weis, Vern L Bullough RN, PhD, DSci
Though there has been a decline in the percentage of sexually active high school students
in the past decade in the United States, the rate of adolescents engaging in sexual
behavior leading to orgasm has actually increased. Such orgasms are achieved without
penetration and penetration is how most American adolescents define sex. Most adolescent
sex also occurs within intimate relationships with partners at or near their own age
but definitions of what constitutes intimacy is different than in the past. Sexuality
is very important in the life of adolescents in the United States, and sexual activity
broadly defined begins fairly early among teenagers although actual sexual intercourse
usually takes place much later.
Keywords: age of consent, sexual consent, sexual violence, sexual abuse, child sexual
abuse, paedophilia, ephebophilia, adolescent-adult sexual relations
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An Empirical Examination of Sexual Relations Between Adolescents and Adults: They
Differ from Those Between Children and Adults and Should Be Treated Separately, Page
55 - 62 / Bruce Rind PhD
The American view that adolescent-adult sexual relations are by definition _child
sexual abuse_ has spread throughout the Western world and reshaped public policy.
This paper, originally presented as a talk, examines the scientific validity of this
view. A historical perspective traces the conflation of the adolescent experience
with rape, incest, and that of the young, prepubescent child. Biological and cognitive
perspectives support the view that adolescents have more in common with adults than
children. Sweeping claims that adolescents react as children are said to is critically
tested by examining two types of relations-those between heterosexual teenage boys
and women and those between gay or bisexual teenage boys and men. Non-clinical empirical
data show overwhelmingly that such relations are characterized mostly by positive
reactions based on consent if not initiative on the part of the minor, with perceived
benefit rather than harm as a correlate. It is concluded that the American view is
false, and that public policy that heightens official reaction to such relations,
such as that currently proposed by the European Union, are either misinformed or disingenuous
in alleging to protect when the motive is to control adolescents.
Keywords: adolescence, sexual behavior, adolesent sex life, teenagers, high school
students, sex, intercourse, oral sex, orgasm, sexual activity, penetration, United
States
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14 to 18 Year Olds as _Children_ by Law? Reflections on Developments in National European
Law, Page 63 - 70 / Lillian Hofmeister
The European Union Council Framework Decision 2004/68/JI of 22.12.2003 _on combating
the sexual exploitation of children and child pornography_ defines as _child_ any
person below the age of 18. Under Austrian law there are no children between the ages
of 7 and 18. The author criticizes that, up to now, the development of age limits
in legal history has taken a clearly different way in the various fields of law of
the Austrian legal order. The Austrian legislator's tendency, which has evolved in
the course of legal history, to grant rights and permits to young people between 14
and 18 years earlier but, at the same time, to impose on them more and more obligations
arising from private and public law, to give them the opportunity to grow into adult
life with full powers and responsibilities step by step, totally contradicts the Council
Framework Decision. Today, adolescents live in a cultural environment characterized
by globalized pop culture and world-wide communication technology. Access to _extreme
ideas_ is offered everywhere and anytime. It is highly difficult to grow up without
any interference and develop one's own personality and sexual orientation according
to one's inherent nature under such circumstances of a world society, and this process
may be seriously disturbed or even prevented by inappropriate prohibitions imposed
by criminal law. However, the aim of any education is to accompany adolescents while
they are growing up so that they become self-assured, self-responsible citizens with
an understanding of how to work for peace and common welfare who know _how to walk
upright_ and do so, and who are informed about their civil rights and are able to
exercise the same decidedly. We do not need only consumers but also citizens of the
world! Repatriarchalization and criminalization are the wrong answers to the urgent
questions of world society. The question how to combat child pornography commerce
is certainly one of the most important concerns because it is abused children and
adolescents for whom it is most difficult to develop their personalities and become
citizens of the world. Legally useful answers can only be expected by those who address
precise questions to the law. In this respect Europe failed. Given the fundamental
right to respect for one's private life and the prohibition of discrimination on the
grounds of age the creation of new offences-involving a definition of the child as
a person up to the age of 18, which contradicts well established law and is unrealistic-shoots
past the mark in the author's opinion. Such provisions miss the target group of potential
offenders, and infantilize and criminalize society instead. With the proposed legal
means it will not be possible to attain the actual aims, i.e., to finally destroy
the market for child pornography, and to punish its organizers, _wire-pullers_ and
users as offenders, and to eliminate them once and for all. The legal status of adolescents
is weakened or at least serious curtailment of their claims arising from the fact
that they have fundamental rights depending on personality and age; and the Council
Framework Decision contradicts the equality guarantees in primary law of the European
Union that they must not be discriminated on the grounds of age.
Keywords: youth protection, youth rights, sexual offenses, age of consent, sexual
content, sexual violence, sexual abuse, child sexual abuse, paedophilia, ephebophilia,
child pornography, child prostitution, youth pornography, youh prostitution, criminal
law, constitutional law, human rights, sexual rights, repatriachalization, infantization,
age discrimintation, European Union, European Law, national law
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Sexuality, Adolescence and the Criminal Law: The Perspective of Criminology, Page
71 - 87 / Michael Baurman PhD
The provisions in the German Criminal Code protecting sexual self-determination-even
after several penal law reforms-are still criminologically not yet coherently structured
and carry some contradictions. Recent research implies that in the section of the
German Criminal Code establishing sexual offences three very divergent forms of deviant
behavior are lumped together in an undifferentiated way: violent offences, infractions
of moral norms and commercialization of sexuality (the latter in most cases in the
form of organised crime). Some offences lack empirical justification in the sense
of a concept of protection, for example due to the fact that damage caused to victims
is not proven. In addition the establishment of age limits turns out as a difficult
task, i.e., when consensual (love) relations of adolescents and of young adults are
concerned. International efforts to approximate (sexual) offences legislation carry
the risk that reasoned, criminologically analysed and empirically justified regulations
are sacrificed to populistic diffused mainstream-thinking.
Keywords: youth protection, youth rights, sexual offenses, age of consent, sexual
content, sexual violence, sexual abuse, child sexual abuse, paedophilia, ephebophilia,
child pornography, child prostitution, youth pornography, youth prostitution, homosexuality,
criminal law, sexual crime, victimology, criminal policy, criminology
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Adolescence, Sexual Aggression and the Criminal Law, Page 89 - 104 / Lorenz Böllinger
JD, MA
Criminal law and criminal policy history is perceived as an evolution of legitimation:
from a morality paradigm before the Seventies of last century to a utilitarian concept
of interdisciplinary enlightenment and rationality, and on to a factual paradigm of
risk containment, security orientation and mere exclusion since the Nineties. However,
in the area of sexual crime, and especially as far as _the protection of minors_ is
concerned, Western law appears to have undergone an additional paradigm change, namely
in reverting to moralistic principles in disregard of scientific insight. This process,
for which victimology appears to be the door opener, is reflected in legal doctrine
and criminal policy, in law enforcement, in populistic media and politics. This evolutionary
process is interpreted as symptomatic for a post-modern trend in the globalised society
where sexual behavior on one hand is blatantly and abusively commercialised, and on
the other hand, if deviant, represents the psychologically most expedient object of
scapegoating and symbolic policy. The article finishes pleading for a return to the
'project of modernity' and to interdisciplinary studies rather than morality as a
foundation for criminal policy.
Keywords: Youth protection, youth rights, sexual offences, age of consent, sexual
consent, sexual violence, sexual abuse, child sexual abuse, pedophilia, ephebophilia,
child pornography, child prostitution, youth pornography, youth prostitution, homosexuality,
criminal law, sexual crime, victimology, criminal policy
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Prostitution of Young Persons: A Topic of Social Work and/or Penal Legislation, Page
105 - 110 / Thomas Moebius MA
Juvenile prostitution in the German welfare work is being interpreted as a peculiar
behaviour which cannot be influenced by criminal law but by psychodynamic and social
condition factors and motives. The public prostitution of adolescents largely takes
place unaffected by criminal persecution. In view of the legislation in Germany, the
regulations of criminal law have not had any decisive influence at juvenile prostitution.
In Germany there exists a sufficient protection of children and adolescents. The current
discussion about the expansion of the childhood definition of young people up to 18
years, and a de-legalization of agreed sexual actions between people under and over
18 years ignores a typical juvenile behaviour. A change in the situation of life of
juvenile prostitutes by a legal intensification, as well as a change in behaviour
through an anonymous sanction system like that of legislation, cannot be expected.
Keywords: youth protection, youth rights, sexual offenses, age of consent, sexual
consent, sexual violence, sexual abuse, paedophilia, ephebophilia, child prostitution,
youth prostitution, juvenile prostitution, homosexuality, criminal law, social work,
street work
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Sexual Consent: The Criminal Law in Europe and Outside of Europe, Page 111 - 171 /
Helmut Graupner JD
What role can the criminal law play in the battle against child sexual abuse? Should
sexual relations of, and with, persons under a certain age be criminalized regardless
of the circumstances, even if they are consensual (_age of consent_, _minimum age_)?
Where should such a minimum age-limit be fixed? Should there be a special, higher
age-limit for particular conditions (e.g., _seduction_, _corruption_)? Should sexual
contacts with minors within a relationship of authority be criminalized generally
or just if authority is abused? Should criminal proceedings be instituted ex officio
or upon complaint only? Should authorities be provided with a power of discretion
or should they be obliged to prosecute and sentence in each case? In answering these
important questions, it is highly beneficial to have a look across the borders to
the solutions other countries have reached in this area. This analysis will provide
an overview on the criminal law governing the sexual behavior of, and with, children
and adolescents in all European jurisdictions and in selected jurisdictions outside
of Europe. It will show which categories of offenses exist and from which age onward
young people can effectively consent to various kinds of sexual behavior and relations
in the different countries. It turns out that all states in Europe and all of the
studied jurisdictions overseas do have minimum age limits for sexual relations, do
punish sexual relations with persons under a certain age. Nowhere is this age set
lower than 12 years. In Europe in one-half of the jurisdictions, consensual sexual
relations with 14-yearold adolescents are legal; in two-thirds with 15-year-olds;
in a majority, this is also the case when the older partner has started the initiative
(and also when the initiative contains an offer of remuneration). In nearly all jurisdictions,
such relations are legal from the age of 16 onwards. Nearly all European jurisdictions
set the same age limit in the criminal law for depicting sexual activity as for the
sexual activity itself. Most states apply a higher age limit for contacts in relationships
of authority. If the authority is not misused the age limit in most jurisdictions
is set between 14 and 16; if it is misused between 16 and 18. Most states make no
difference between heterosexual and homosexual relations.
Keywords: youth protection, youth rights, sexual offenses, age of consent, sexual
consent, sexual violence, sexual abuse, child sexual abuse, statutoy rape, pedophilia,
ephebophilia, child pornography, child prostitution, youth pornography, youth prostitition,
juvenile prostitution, homosexuality, criminal law, human rights, sexual rights, comparative
law, sex laws
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