Happy birthday, you're a sex offender! Florida girl charged upon turning 18, for dating a 15yo girl.

[backscatter712]

23. This is when these kinds of trials get very ugly.

If this girl has a good defense attorney, that attorney's going to do what every attorney does - tries to get all the evidence the prosecution wants to present suppressed.

If the girl didn't plead the 5th and talked to the cops, she's likely to be in very deep shit if she confessed to copping a feel five minutes after she turned 18. But if the defense attorney can find some issues with how the cops questioned her, he may be able to have that evidence thrown out. Did she have her rights read to her? Did she have the opportunity to get a lawyer? Was she coerced in any way?

And then there's the other likely source of evidence, the 15 year old. And I feel really bad for this girl - she didn't do anything wrong, she did a typical high school relationship, except it was girlfriend-girlfriend instead of boyfriend-girlfriend. She has to deal with psycho, religious homophobic batshit parents, who may be abusive.

And hopefully, she'll be able somehow to avoid testifying or leaving a deposition, but if she doesn't the defense attorney is going to grill her. Get every single detail of what the two girls did together, go over them over and over and over, look for inconsistencies in her story, pick her story apart as much as possible, to get that evidence suppressed, or create a reasonable doubt in the eyes of the judge or jury hearing the case.

This is why rape trials are so nasty. But it may be necessary to keep a woman who morally speaking hasn't done anything to deserve prison or a felony conviction or a spot on the sex-offender registry from getting railroaded.