Yeah, the laws around consent are always muddy. I think it's important to always frame the debate about protecting potential victims, rather than enforcing morality. I think that hard, arbitrary line is an important part of protecting victims. People need to know that there's going to be a hard line that if they cross, they're going to be punished hard, no matter how willing the other participant seemed. In this case, that's the part that really pisses me off: that "It never occurred to him that she was 15 years old" is part of the defence. That's like a store using a similar defence when a minor tries to buy tobacco. (It's particularly egregious that a police officer would claim to be so clueless.) If he had asked her age (and not asked a leading question such as "you're like, 18, right?"), and she had lied, I can see that as a (slight) mitigating factor.
I'm not going to pretend that I know how 15 year-old-girls think. I don't even know how a woman my own age thinks most-times. But it seems to me that if you make the asking of this question a requirement, it provides an opportunity for a confused, impressionable youth to get out of an unwanted situation simply by truthfully answering a simple question. That would allow a little more protection to victims than they have now. It's only a small part of the big picture of victim's rights, sure, but that's the part of this story that really upsets me.
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