Statutory Rape: Which State&#39;s Laws Apply? A 17 year old male child has sexual intercourse with a significantly (at least two decades) older man. In New York, where the child's residence is, this is, I think, legal. At the time of the incident, however, the child was staying in California, where this is, I think (same source), illegal, for a period of two months. The state of residence of the adult is unknown. Which state's laws apply? Can the adult be prosecuted?
When a criminal act takes place, the state in which the act took place has jurisdiction. State of residence of perpetrator or victim is not at all relevant. It also would not matter where the minor was "staying", all that matters is where the act took place. If that was California, California Penal Code 261.5(c) says Any person who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is more than three years younger than the perpetrator is guilty of either a misdemeanor or a felony, and shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170. Additionally, (261.5(e)(1) states Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, an adult who engages in an act of sexual intercourse with a minor in violation of this section may be liable for civil penalties in the following amounts:... (C) An adult who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor at least three years younger than the adult is liable for a civil penalty not to exceed ten thousand dollars ($10,000)
In the U.S. Those stories could constitute &quot;obscenity,&quot; in which case they could violate all sorts of federal and state laws. I was surprised to discover on this DoJ page: 18 U.S.C. § 1465 and § 1466: It is illegal to sell and distribute obscene material on the Internet. Convicted offenders face fines and up to 5 years in prison. It is illegal for an individual to knowingly use interactive computer services to display obscenity in a manner that makes it available to a minor less than 18 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 223(d) –Communications Decency Act of 1996, as amended by the PROTECT Act of 2003). It is also illegal to knowingly make a commercial communication via the Internet that includes obscenity and is available to any minor less than 17 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 231 –Child Online Protection Act of 1998). Under some state laws merely authoring or possessing obscene material is a felony. However, if the material is not obscene then it is actually protected by the first amendment. In fact many public schools (at least when I was growing up) required us to read &quot;literature&quot; (e.g., The Color Purple) that included descriptions of child rape and sexual abuse. Descriptions of purportedly actual sexual abuse of minors are also common in the testimony and published biographies of abuse victims. In the U.K. Such obscene stories are also illegal in the U.K. The relevant law is the Obscene Publications Act 1959. The Crown Prosecution Service provides information on the specific application of that and related laws.
If an adult had physically restrained the miscreant brat, they could be sued for / charged with battery (which does not mean "beating up", per Cal Penal 242, it is the "willful and unlawful use of force or violence upon the person of another". In either case, there is a defense that can be mounted, the "defense of others" defense, to the effect that the person had a reasonable belief that it was necessary to prevent physical harm to others. Which means, the jury would imagine themselves in that situation and guess how likely it is that someone might get hurt. Lofting 5 lb chess pieces at a 2 year old could poke out an eye, especially since they haven't learned to duck at that age – however, I question (as would an opposing attorney) the characterization "quite dangerous". At any rate, it would depend on the level of danger posed. There is also a "proportionality" requirement for the defense of others defense: "The defendant used no more force than was reasonably necessary to defend against that danger" (CalCrim instruction 3470). The battery might not have been necessary, since simply getting between the criminal and his victims could have been sufficient. As to whether there would actually be a lawsuit, that depends in part on the mind-set of the parents. Assuming that the level of force did not rise above simple bodily contact, it is unlikely that a jury would vote to convict / find liable, but certainly not impossible. If under those circumstances the results would not be in serious doubt, then it is unlikely that the person would be prosecuted (the prosecutor wouldn't bother with such a case). We may also assume that a decent attorney would persuade the offended parent-client that it is not a good use of their money to pursue he matter. Still, the risk is not negligible, since you don't know whether you'll have bad luck with the jury, or whether the child suffers from eggshell skull syndrome and then you would be is serious trouble. I don't think the fears are unrealistic, though they may be improbable, and they could be definitive for people who live in fear.
germany Is there any act of husband or wife which can be considered as rape? The paragraph for sexual offences is §177 StGb. Obviously there are nuances between those offences, not everything is &quot;rape&quot;, but all of it is illegal. To answer your question, yes, the same acts that are considered rape when they are not husband and wife. While marriage had been an exception, this was considered archaic by many and this exception was removed in 1997: Vergewaltigung in der Ehe ist seit Juli 1997 strafbar. Mit dem 33. Strafrechtsänderungsgesetz wurde das Merkmal außerehelich aus dem Tatbestand der Vergewaltigung, § 177 StGB, gestrichen, sodass seitdem auch die eheliche Vergewaltigung als ein Verbrechen geahndet wird. Translation: Marital rape has been punishable since July 1997. With the 33rd Criminal Law Amendment Act, the characteristic &quot;extramarital&quot; was removed from the definition of rape, § Section 177 of the Criminal Code, so that since then marital rape has also been punished as a crime. There is no mention of how consent is to be expressed or even that it needs to be expressed explicitely.
Unfortunately, the police are correct The limit on filing a civil claim (a lawsuit where you seek monetary compensation) is before you turn 40. If you were 11 in 1985 then it is too late to sue your assaulter. For criminal prosecution, the law was changed in 2016. Prior to the change, the limitation was the same as for civil cases. After the change, there is no limit but only if the offence was committed on or after 1 January 2017. Assuming that your reference to Kelly is to this guy - the alleged offences were committed in the 1990s and the prosecutions are under Illinois, Minnesota and Federal law (the Federal crimes alleged are not the sexual assault of a minor). Each state has it's own rules.
germany Defendants who are later accused of a crime committed when they were minor (under 18, or under 21 if the court finds that they had juvenile mental maturity) will be tried under juvenile rules. That can lead to people almost 90 years old being sentenced to juvenile detention. (A suspended sentence, not least because of the time that had passed.) [...] On July 23th, 2020, D. was given a suspended sentence of two years of juvenile detention for 5232 counts of accessory to murder and one count of accessory to attempted murder. [...] (my translation)
U.S. law does not forbid 15 year olds from joining dating websites. Direct U.S. regulation of Internet communications mostly via the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) has a cutoff age of 13 years old. This said, nothing obligates websites to allow minors to join their dating app, and they may be reluctant to do so for fear that if you are mistreated by someone as a result of the app that they could be held responsible. In particular, amendments to the Communications Decency Act (CDA) called FOSTA-SESTA for the &quot;Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and &quot;Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA)&quot; which took effect April 11, 2018, limited the prior near total protection from liability under Section 230 of the CDA. The amendments maked it illegal to knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking, and amended the Communications Decency Act's section 230 safe harbors (which make online services immune from civil liability for their users' actions) to exclude enforcement of federal or state sex trafficking laws from immunity. Federal sex trafficking laws largely apply to commercial sex by people under the age of 18, which an online dating app could facilitate, if used by someone inclined to use it in that manner. The two main federal sex trafficking laws are as follows: Section 1591 now provides in part the following: “Whoever knowingly in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, or within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, recruits, entices, harbors, transports, provides, obtains, advertises, maintains, patronizes, or solicits by any means a person; knowing, or in reckless disregard of the fact, that means of force, threats of force, fraud, coercion ... , or any combination of such means will be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act, or that the person has not attained the age of 18 years and will be caused to engage in a commercial sex act,” shall be imprisoned not less than 15 years (not less than 10 years, if the victim is 14 years of age or older and the offender is less than 18 years of age). The Mann Act outlaws prostitution and unlawful sexual activities that involve interstate or foreign travel. It consists of three principal substantive sections. Section 2421 proscribes the interstate or foreign transportation of someone for purposes of prostitution or unlawful sexual activity; misconduct which is punishable by imprisonment for not more than 10 years. Section 2422 condemns coercing or enticing another person to travel in interstate or foreign commerce to engage in prostitution or unlawful sexual activity, or using interstate communications to coerce or entice a child to engage in such conduct. The communications offense is punishable by imprisonment for not less than 10 years; the travel offense by imprisonment for not more than 20 years. Section 2423 outlaws four distinct offenses: (1) §2423(a) - transportation of a child in interstate or foreign commerce for purposes of prostitution or unlawful sexual purposes; (2) §2423(b)—interstate or foreign travel for purposes of unlawful sexual abuse of a child; (3) §2423(c)—foreign travel and subsequent unlawful sexual abuse of a child; and (4) §2423(d)— arranging, for profit, the travel outlawed in any of these offenses. The first is punishable by imprisonment for not less than 10 years, each of the others by imprisonment for not more than 30 years. So, the reluctance of a dating app to allow minors to use their services is understandable. They either need to aggressively police a low cost or free except for ad support service with considerable employee expense to do so, to avoid the risk of FOSTA-SESTA authorized liability, or they can not offer the service at all. In a nutshell, the app providers consider you to be jail-bait and don't want to face the associated risks.
With these facts, assuming Mr Y was charged with involuntary manslaughter (like in MA v. Carter) or aiding a suicide, based solely or almost solely on the messages, under which jurisdiction would he be charged? Applicable Law States have jurisdiction both over crimes that are committed in the state and over crimes that cause harm in a state. The classic law school example is a murder committed by shooting someone with a gun across a state line. Both the state where the gun is fired and the state where the person is shot have jurisdiction over the crime. Jurisdiction generally requires a purposeful act directed at someone or something in the state where the harm is suffered in most cases. But that isn't a hard and fast rule of constitutional law in other contexts, and there are few cases on point. I would consider this to be an open question. Certainly, however, the mere fact that the victim of a crime is transported to another state for medical treatment, where that victim then dies from causes relate to the crime, does not give the state where the death ultimately occurs in the hospital jurisdiction over the offense. Double Jeopardy Indeed, the constitutional protection against double jeopardy does not prohibit both states from independently convicting and punishing the same defendant for the same crime in this situation under the &quot;dual sovereignty&quot; doctrine. As background, the Colorado Supreme Court decided a dual sovereignty double jeopardy case today. Application To Facts (The application to the facts has been revised upon closer examination of them.) The line about &quot;Ms X, who is, at this point, still in Nevada,&quot; is confusing because she was in California before and isn't described as ever being in Nevada. I presume that &quot;still in California&quot; was really meant. Mr. Y could be charged (at least) in Nevada or New Jersey from which the continuing course of communications was sent (undue emphasis on the final communication is probably inappropriate), and Wyoming, to which the bulk of the communications were directed and where the bulk of the harm was suffered. California and Nebraska do not seem to be places to which the communications were really directed or where the greatest harm was suffered. Momentary presence in Nebraska air space is probably insufficient. There are also a set of statutes that specifically address crimes committed during an airplane flight (see also here) that has been discussed in other answers at this website. To the extent that this is treated as a homicide committed while in flight, 49 USC § 46506, might also allow for a federal criminal prosecution. I'm not sure that this is really a crime committed in flight, however, as it involved a course of conduct. A single email or a single moment of death doesn't really capture it. It is more analogous to a poisoning taking place in many doses over a period of time. Is Mr Y's speech in this case protected by the First Amendment? No. First Amendment considerations do apply to crimes involving communications between people that are not false, but if there is sufficient intent to cause suicide or other harm, the First Amendment yields to other considerations. The freedom of speech is not absolute. The exact place that the line is drawn is a matter of ongoing litigation. This specific issue is explored in depth in Clay Calvert, &quot;The First Amendment and Speech Urging Suicide: Lessons from the Case of Michelle Carter and the Need to Expand Brandenburg Application&quot; 94 Tulane Law Review 79 (November 2019). This article is responsive to that case of Commonwealth v. Carter, 115 N.E.3d 559 (Mass. 2019). The article explains in its introduction that: In February 2019, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Commonwealth v. Carter' affirmed Michelle Carter's conviction for involuntary manslaughter as a youthful offender based on her urging Conrad Roy to commit suicide.' In doing so, the court rejected Carter's claim that her conviction violated her First Amendment' right of free speech. Specifically, it reasoned that Carter's words with Roy immediately before and while he died were &quot;integral to a course of criminal conduct and thus [did] not raise any constitutional problem.&quot; In brief, Massachusetts's high court concluded that Carter's speech caused Roy's death' and that the First Amendment provided her no refuge.'