From my home in Boise, Idaho, we have another story illustrating the disparate way that adult women abusing teen boys are treated v. adults men abusing teen girls:
A 34-year-old Middleton woman has been sentenced to eight years in prison, including two fixed, for felony lewd conduct with a child under 16 — but the sentence was suspended and she was placed on probation, the Canyon County Prosecutor’s Office said Thursday.
Judge Thomas J. Ryan then ordered Robin Hackney to serve 120 days in the Canyon County Jail. She must also register as a sex-offender for life.
All but 120 days of her sentence was suspended. Anyone think that a man with a 15 year old girl would get 120 days? I know for a fact that doesn’t happen in Idaho. He wouldn’t be seeing the outside of a jail cell this decade if there cases had been reversed. But it continues a nationwide problem: the innocence of teenage boys is valued far less than that of teenage girls.
It’s because we assume that boys “enjoy” these encounters far more so in the grand scheme of things. Women who have sex with underaged boys are not a threat to society, the way male sex predators are.
I beg to differ. The reason we have laws against sex with the underaged is that we recognize they aren’t adults, they don’t know what they’re doing and in principle any adult having sex with someone whose actions are being ruled by their hormones, whose mind hasn’t caught up to their body, is taking advantage of them. This is just as true with a woman having sex with a teenage boy as it is a man having sex with a teenage girl.
And with courts handing out sentences like this, there’s little deterrent being offered to a crime. The odds of being caught at some thing like this are very slim and if at the end of the road, the punishment doesn’t suit the crime, then you’re going to have a lot more 30 something women gratifying themselves on teenage boys.