Is it true that it&#39;s not illegal for a parent to sell their 13-year-old child to a drug dealer? My question is prompted by an episode of the TV show Law &amp; Order, specifically the 6th-season episode titled &quot;Slave&quot;. In the episode, a couple of the lawyers state as fact that it is not illegal for a parent to sell their child. That seems clearly false, but I'm skeptical that the writers would write something that's obviously wrong. It makes me wonder if there's something I'm missing. The prime suspect for a shooting in New York City is a 13-year-old boy. The truth is that his mother, an impoverished crack addict, has &quot;sold&quot; her son to her drug dealer to settle a debt of $865, and to gain credit to acquire more drugs. The boy is guilty of the shooting, which he performed under direct orders from the dealer. Once the prosecutors figure this out, they present their theory of the case to the boy and his attorney, hoping to deal for his testimony. He refuses to deal, and then his lawyer says: Selling your kid may be despicable, but it's not illegal. In the next scene, District Attorney Adam Schiff concurs: She's right. No statute against selling your kid. My question: is that accurate? More precisely, were those statements consistent with the law in New York City in April 1996 (when this episode aired)? In case it matters, here's the bulk of what is revealed about the arrangement, elicited when McCoy examines the boy (Lonnie) on the witness stand. Of course, there's no formal legal agreement. None of the people I quoted earlier had this information when they made the quoted statements. McCoy: Lonnie, tell these people why you didn't run away [from the whole situation with the dealer]. Lonnie: Because of my mom. She said I had to stay with Ross [the dealer] and do what he said. McCoy: Why? Lonnie: She owed him money and he was going to hurt her. McCoy: How long were you with him before you were arrested? Lonnie: I'm not sure. It was a lot of weeks. ...questions about his activities with the dealer... McCoy: Did he pay you? Lonnie: No, sir. ... questions about bad treatment McCoy: How long were you supposed to stay with him? Lonnie: I don't know. McCoy: As long as your mother needed drugs? Lonnie: I don't know. I'm not sure whether it's appropriate to tag this with contract-law, property, employment, or even us-constitution (e.g. 13th Amendment).
This is totally, flat out wrong. Quite frankly, it is immoral, although not illegal, for the producers to even cause some viewers to believe it is true. The United States criminal code (Title 18) in Chapter 77, prohibits all forms of slavery (except as punishment for a crime which New York State does not authorize) including the one described. It is not legal. This statute implements the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (abolishing slavery except as punishment for a crime) and was enacted under the enforcement authority provided by that statute. Those statutes have been in force for more than a century. For example, 18 USC § 1590 states: (a)Whoever knowingly recruits, harbors, transports, provides, or obtains by any means, any person for labor or services in violation of this chapter shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If death results from the violation of this section, or if the violation includes kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or the attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, the defendant shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or life, or both. (b)Whoever obstructs, attempts to obstruct, or in any way interferes with or prevents the enforcement of this section, shall be subject to the penalties under subsection (a). Similarly, 15 U.S.C. § 1584 is squarely on point: (a)Whoever knowingly and willfully holds to involuntary servitude or sells into any condition of involuntary servitude, any other person for any term, or brings within the United States any person so held, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If death results from the violation of this section, or if the violation includes kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or the attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, the defendant shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or life, or both. (b)Whoever obstructs, attempts to obstruct, or in any way interferes with or prevents the enforcement of this section, shall be subject to the penalties described in subsection (a). It also would constitute criminal child endangerment, child abandonment, use of a child to commit a controlled substances offense, conspiracy to commit criminal coercion, conspiracy to have a child engaged in illegal child labor, etc. Possession of controlled substances by the mother is also a crime, although that crime was committed before the mother tried to sell her child to pay her drug debt. (I originally also included crimes like sex trafficking and pimping a child, but from the question it does not appear that the facts implicated those offenses.) It would also constitute grounds to civilly terminate the parental rights of the mother for child abuse and/or neglect, because it violated laws in addition to criminal laws. If the child had a living father whose parental rights had not been terminated (one can't tell from the question, but perhaps the full episode made it clearer), it would violate the father's right to custody of his child. The child, though a guardian or as an adult, could sue the mother for intentional inflection of emotional distress/outrageous conduct, false imprisonment, failure to provide support, etc.
In NSW Australia this is covered by Division 15A of the Crimes Act 1900 which deals with Child Abuse Material. Under Section 91FA a &quot;child&quot; means a person who is under the age of 16 years - the situation you describe would be between consenting adults in NSW. “Child abuse material” can be text or images that are sexually explicit and would be “offensive” to a normal person (which means offensive to the particular jury) Assuming Jane is 15 or less, however, prima facie the image would be child abuse material and under Section 91H &quot;A person who produces, disseminates or possesses child abuse material is guilty of an offence.&quot; The punishment is up to 10 years in jail. Section 91H provides a number of defences, the most relevant to the circumstances you describe being: that the defendant did not know, and could not reasonably be expected to have known, that he or she produced, disseminated or possessed (as the case requires) child abuse material. that the material concerned came into the defendant’s possession unsolicited and the defendant, as soon as he or she became aware of its nature, took reasonable steps to get rid of it. (for possession only) If, considering all the circumstances of the relationship, Joe doesn't know and could not reasonably be expected to know Jane's age then he can use the defence under S91H(1). If he did not request the picture and as soon as he was aware of Jane's age, deleted it, then he can use the defence under S91H(2). The outcome is not so rosy for Jane: she is guilty of both production and dissemination of child abuse material and (assuming she knows how old she is) faces up to 10 years in jail (14 if she is under 14) and registration on the Sex Offenders List for life. It is admittedly unlikely in the circumstances that the state would prosecute her and, if they did, it is very likely that the judge would rule that no conviction be recorded.
Content Warning: this post mentions rape / non-consensual sex and discusses (in some non-explicit detail) coercion of minors. As of Tuesday, March 1st, 2016, according to the Indonesian Penal Code (translated version; I cannot read Indonesian), Indonesia's age of consent is 16 years old (18 for homosexual acts). Indonesia also does not have close-in-age exemptions (for example, in Canada, the age of consent is 16 years old, but a 14-year-old can consent to a partner less than 5 years older, and a 12-year-old can consent within 2 years). I cannot verify this source but according to Wikipedia, which cites this PDF, the age of consent could be raised to 18 years under the Child Protection Act arguing that sexual acts can cause bodily or mental harm and &quot;child&quot; is defined as anyone under 18 years of age. As an example, according to Wikipedia, a court case in 2009 (Sydney Morning Herald) saw this used to convict an Australian man. There is nothing weird about this law. I left this as a comment, but let me elaborate in an answer. Your misconception is that persuasion is an innocent and ethical thing. The harsh reality is that children are, on average, more ignorant than adults and lack judgement, foresight, and rationality at times, and there are disgusting individuals that will exploit this fact to get children to do things they otherwise wouldn't such as sex, or drugs. Additionally, age comes with a power imbalance - think a teacher using their power over a student to convince or coerce them into having sex with them. That is not strictly violence, nor telling lies, or &quot;forcing&quot; in the strict sense, nor trickery, but a reasonable individual would still consider that to be not real consent. The fact is that children can only consent if it is entirely of their own accord and judgement and there is no extrinsic pressure forcing or persuading them to. In fact, I argue that adults are subject to this too and persuading or coercing an adult into having sex is also disgusting (but doing this to children is far more abhorrent). But since children are considered by law to lack the judgement to protect themselves against coercion and realize they should reject and get away from their persuader, the law instead protects them. Persuading someone is not necessarily non-consensual. It holds a high chance of being non-consensual, and consent is only considered real when it is a) not coerced, and b) the subject is legally capable; that is, not intoxicated, not a minor (by whatever the age of cosnent is), etc. If all obscene acts with a girl under 18 are illegal, why doesn't the law simply say don't do obscene acts with a girl under 18? Because sex with people between 16 and 18 is legal (in Indonesia) under the right conditions. Although I must say, since you word it as &quot;obscene acts&quot;, then of course they're illegal. Obscene acts are, by definition, morally reprehensible and/or legally incriminating, so illegal things are illegal, is basically what you're saying. Just say &quot;having sex&quot; if you mean &quot;having sex&quot;. Why does the law prohibit persuading girls to do obscene acts but does not prohibit the actual doing of the obscene act itself? Kind of weird. This makes no sense at all, and hopefully after reading my answer you understand why this makes absolutely no sense. How in the earth anyone can have sex with someone without persuading? He walks the street and accidentally plug his penis in? ... Rape? There are many ways to have sex with someone without persuading them that I don't think I have to list. Your main mistake is still conflating persuaded / coerced consent as real consent. In summary, persuasion is not some innocent matter of convincing someone in a friendly manner to have sex. It includes coercion, abusing one's power, exploiting a child's ignorance and limited judgement or foresight, and other reprehensible factors. Consent cannot be given if the individual is too young, impaired, unable to legally give consent, or coerced into it.
It is not entrapment because entrapment must be done by officers of the State (police usually). A member of the public inducing another to commit a crime is not entrapment and not a defense to having committed it. Entrapment is a "thing" in Ireland as it is in all common law jurisdictions, however, the specific limits on what police can and cannot do vary by jurisdiction. Police posing as underage children to catch pedophiles is legal throughout Australia (i.e., not entrapment). Police are more restricted in Canada and the USA but I believe that online "trawling" by police is legal in those jurisdictions too, however, they must remain more "passive" than Australian police. Yes, there is a crime being committed, the crime of attempting to engage in underage sex. It doesn't matter that the actual crime attempted is impossible to commit because the "victim" is not actually underage. Evidence is evidence – it doesn't matter who collects it. However, amateurs in the handling of evidence are more likely to botch it up in a way that would allow the defense to have it ruled inadmissible than professionals (although even they can botch it up).
So I can block children under 13, but I can't tell them that? You can tell them after they fail, you cannot tell them on the asking screen. Then what is the correct way to block children under 13 to access my website and still comply with COPPA? I agree with you that it is odd that they recommend using a cookie but they do!* So you have a entry page with a simple question, "Please indicate your age" and then block based on the response. That's it. Note that the rule is neutral. This means that you do not need to disguise your purpose or try to trick people into entering their correct age. *I think that what is happening here is that any parent who wants to complain to their legislator can be met with the response, "If your kid is so sneaky that they are using different computers to lie about their age what do you want us to do about it?" The fact is, this scheme keeps innocent kids from seeing stuff they shouldn't; the sneaky ones are going to find a way.
If you were an adult, the risk would be a lot higher. You can get away with things when you are 13. And since you are not an adult, the purchase contract is voidable so your parents can void your purchase. Don't do this ever again. It's not a "prank". You say you have no money and your parents have no money. The money on that card could be the last bit of money that the card owner had. Worst case someone has become homeless, had a bit of money in his card account, and you took the last of their savings. Does that make you feel bad? It should.
At a minimum, what the theater did was not a crime. When you are in a movie theater you have what is called a "license" from the theater to be present, which is revocable at will without due process (possibly subject to breach of contract damages) and not a property right to be in the theater the way that a tenant who must be evicted does. As a practical matter, given that the amount in controversy is, at most, $25 or so, and this is not a situation where the prevailing party would get their attorneys' fees, this is not cost effective to litigate, regardless of who is correct, even in small claims court without an attorney. Whether or not the theater breached its contract isn't perfectly clear, because usually, the contract between a movie goer and a movie theater is not spelled out in any writing provided to the movie goer, incorporated by reference in something disclosed to the movie goer, or signed by either of the parties, or even with an oral offer and acceptance setting forth all of the terms of the agreement. (Of course, if a written terms of service is actually provided to the movie goer, or a reference to where it can be found is provided to the movie goer, those terms will control and the contract will almost certainly be written to allow the movie theater to do what it did in this case.) In the frequent case where this is not done, the contract between a movie goer an a movie theater is usually a contract implied in fact whose terms at the edges aren't terribly well defined and there is little case law to tell us what the terms of the contract is, because the cases aren't worth litigating up to an appellate court where binding precedents are made. Indeed, one reason that movie theaters may have declined to put their implied in fact contracts with movie goers in writing is to leave the situation ambiguous so as to discourage someone whose case would be clear even if for a small dollar amount, if the terms of the contact were clear, from suing them over issues like this one. When the stakes are small and the outcome is always uncertain, it almost never makes sense to sue. There is certainly a colorable argument that you breached the contract by being present without an adult at an R-rating movie when the public statements about an R rating made available to the movie goers says that rated R means only admitted with a person over the age of 17, contrary to the theater's policies on that issue, although it isn't perfectly clear if this is a suggestion or a binding term of the agreement. Another fair interpretation of the contract between a movie goer and the movie theater is that a movie goer can be removed from any movie whenever, if in the reasonable opinion of the movie theater management, good cause exists to do so, and that its discretion should be upheld so long as it acts in good faith and in a non-discriminatory manner. I don't agree, however, that the question of whether or not you breached a contract was unambiguously clear, because the terms of the agreement are not well defined. I would give you at least a 20% chance of prevailing if you took the issue to court although I would agree that it is more likely than not that you would not prevail if you took the issue to court.
I think your confusion stems from assuming there is a universal definition of "minor" across laws, jurisdictions, and rights. 18 is the age of majority for the purpose of voting (26th Amendment), the death penalty, labor law (although age 14 is the minimum age for employment), and many other laws. But, 21 is the age required to buy alcohol in all states (by their own choice in order to receive highway funding). Nothing requires the age of majority to be consistent across different sections of code or statute or between jurisdictions (except when constitutionally prescribed, like voting age, or minimum age for certain elected offices). There are many counties that prohibit purchase of alcohol at any age. The age of consent varies between 14 and 18 across US states. Age 65 is a threshold for certain tax credits. You need to be 25 in order to be a member of the US House of Representatives, 30 to be a Senator, 35 to be President. You are only protected from age discrimination if you are 40 or older. Here is a rough list of various age-based thresholds for various rights, privileges, or responsibilities in the US. (I havn't vetted this whole list, and some are clearly satire, but the ones I know about are consistent with my understanding.)