Woman weds under-age boy and is charged with molestation

[Ian David]

Explain to me why gay people getting married is the threat? It looks like we need to "protect" marriage from straight people...


GAINESVILLE, Ga. Nov 14, 2005 — A 37-year-old woman was charged with child molestation after being accused of having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy whom she married last week.

The Gainesville Times quoted unidentified members of the boy's family as saying that Lynnette Clark is pregnant with the boy's child and that they were married Tuesday. Judy Hayles, the boy's grandmother, said she received a notice of the marriage from Dawson County because she is the boy's guardian.

Clark was arrested Wednesday and brought to the Hall County Detention Center.

District Attorney Lee Darragh said the Georgia law on child molestation, which says that a person under age 16 legally cannot consent to a sexual act, does not take into consideration whether the minor is married or not.


<snip>

Georgia law provides an exemption to age requirements for marriage if the couple have a child or the female can show she is pregnant. In Georgia, one must be 18 to marry without parental consent or 16 to marry with parental consent.

More:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/LegalCenter/wireStory?id=1311439

[SammyBlue]

1. I smell so much sexism coming out as well as a double standard

If the sexes were reversed, you'd hear people wanted to string up the molester by his balls.

But, there's no such thing as a FILF. It's a MILF, and that's a man's fantasy.

Remember when that blonde teacher got indicted for having sex with one of their students in the deep south last year? The Sheriff said "she sure is a good looking woman." Would he have said that about a man?

FUCK NO!!! It's cute when women do this, it's creepy when men do it? I smell a BID double standard!

Convict this pervert and lock her away!

[lazarus]

4. I hate to take this position

But, while I agree it's a double standard, I was active sexually at 15. And I would have been very interested in any older women who might have been interested in me.

Not every 15 year old male is equipped for that sort of thing (emotionally, get your mind out of the gutter!), but some are.

I do agree, however, that an older male/younger female would be looked on as creepy and horrible. Even though, supposedly, girls mature faster than boys, and so would be more interested in older men quicker than boys would be interested in older women.

Maybe it's a mentality that females are weaker? Or that we can't admit that a girl would be sexually interested in someone? That's an old myth, but it's still around in the subconcious of many people.

[enlightenment]

9. Sammy, it isn't cute.

It is grotesque. It is child molestation. She needs to be locked up, and the pregnancy should be terminated.

Please don't paint all of us with the same brush -- we're on your side.

[Robert Cooper]

16. "the pregnancy should be terminated"

You want to justify that statement? It's one thing to abort a fetus in women who've been raped and request the procedure, but to my knowledge no one is requesting an abortion here.

[lukasahero]

17. This woman fully agrees with you.

I think what you may find is that a lot of men think it's cute when a woman is the perpetrator because, as you say, it's every man's fantasy. (There was a thread about this elsewhere already and a bunch of guys were bragging about how they lost their virginity to much older women.)

IMO, adults, whatever the gender, should not be sleeping with children of either gender. This woman should be jailed.

[napi21]

2. So Grandma received a notice of the marriage in the mail?

"Judy Hayles, the boy's grandmother, said she received a notice of the marriage from Dawson County because she is the boy's guardian."

But the law says a 16 year old can only marry WITH parental/guardian concent. I guess the 15 year old lied on his application, huh?

This is sad, and doubly so because I live 15 minutes from Gainesville!!!!

[CottonBear]

6. There is an age exemption if the woman is pregnant. n/t

[LiberalinNC]

3. That's just wrong!

:puke:

[Debi]

5. Did nobody notice that these two were spending time together

I mean enough time alone for this woman to get pregnant?

[Ian David]

7. I bet they met through Church. Just a hunch.

[0007]

13. The Round Church! n/t

[RebelOne]

19. I wouldn't be surprised. People in Dawson County

are very religious. I should know, as my son and his family live in Dawsonville.

[funflower]

8. There have been quite a few female teachers in their 20's and 30's

arrested in the past couple of years for having sex with one or more teenage male students. Maybe we should rethink the assumption that adult women do not find young men attractive.

The core of this issue, regardless of the genders of the parties, is at what age children become capable of making responsible decisions about their own sexual behavior and at what age we consider them ready to take on the legal responsibilities associated with marrige.

I think this woman is a jerk because she took advantage of a boy who is, in my opinion, too young to make a considered decision as to whether to become involved sexually or maritally with an adult woman. I don't think it's a bit cute, and I hope they throw the book at her and all of the other women and men who can't keep their hands off of underage teens.

[nosmokes]

10. i hafta disagree. like lazarus i was sexually active at a

young age and had a couple of older partners. i went into it eyes wide open, fully knowing exactly what was going. i wasn't seduced against my will and there was no coercion used because they held a position of authority or power becaue of their age - we were just plain horny. it was no more or less perverse than what i was doing with my peers and it din't warp me for life or anything. for goddess sake, it's just sex. the shame here is that neither was responsible enough to use birth control - that's what is inexcusable.

[xchrom]

12. i'm in the same boat as you --

and many of my friends would have been thrown in jail because i was so young.

i have to say -- my eyes were open and i went after them as much as they went after me.
well, it wasn't ''me'' they were after -- and i wasn't after ''them'' just what we could do for each other and i understood it as that.
and btw -- they were both sexes.

[funflower]

14. Congratulations, Senores Casanova! Nonethless, there is SOME age

at which consent to sexual involvement is not valid based on the tender years of a participant, regardless of whether the underage individual perceives himself/herself to be acting voluntarily. Just what is the appropriate age of consent might be up for discussion, but, at some point, the law must draw a bright line. Generally speaking, children under the age of 18 are not considered to have the capacity to form an enforceable contract. Choose your age, gentlemen, but at some point, children are just too stupid to know when they are being taken advantage of, regardless of what their personal desires are.

Despite your own joyous adolescent sexuality, an awful lot of kids ARE taken advantage of by the adults in their world. In most relationships, adults inherently have power over the children around them that is not present in adult-to-adult relationships and child-to-child relationships.

[Ian David]

11. The Prophet Mohammed married a girl who was 6 years old...

and consummated the marriage when she was 9. Mohammed was 54 years old.

“A father may give consent to have his young virgin daughter married without obtaining her permission, for she does not have a choice, exactly as Abu Bakr El Sadiq did to his daughter Aisha, when she was six years old. He married her to the prophet Muhammad without her permission.”

Sahih Muslim (by Imam al-Mawawy), vol. 3, p. 577.
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/008.smt.html



And it's not just Muslim law, either.

There are plenty of "Child Brides" in Judeo-Christian tradition as well.

In a "Traditional Marriage" little girls in the Judeo-Christian tradition were very often married around the age of 13.

"Abstinence Until Marriage" was a whole lot easier when marriage took place on the cusp of puberty, and anyone deflowering a virgin was probably molesting a child.

I am not saying I agree with lowering the age of consent and I am not condoning the actions of the older woman, by the way.

[funflower]

15. Yuck, yuck, and double yuck. I agree things were different when the age

of marriage and the age of puberty were closer. I'm not advocating "abstinence until marriage." Just pointing out that, a significant minority of the time, it is women who become sexually involved with adolescent boys.

[lukasahero]

18. Isn't the real core of the issue at what point adults begin to behave

like adults? I'm not sure reconsidering when a child is mature enough to make this decision is as easy as considering when an adult should know better than to have sex with a child. Adults are supposed to behave responsibly. Children shouldn't be expected to be able to make responsible judgements when it's clear that adults can barely be trusted to do the same.