ACLU of Florida Statement on Prosecution of 18-Year-Old Kaitlyn Hunt

[Ms. Toad]

50. And did you know the details of the statutory rape law for your state

when you were a senior in high school?

Do you know them for the state you live in now (Without running to look them up)?

Are you aware that there are many states in which the relationship between these two is perfectly legal (and two states in which there could even be a 10 year gap in ages)?

Would you feel the same way if they had been a 15 year old freshman and a 17 year old senior when the sexual relationship started, and the older student turned 18 during her senior year? The law treats this situation as identical. The day the older student turns 18 they must end the relationship which was legal the day before or risk conviction of a felony and being labeled a sex offender for life.

The freshman in this case was taking classes with upper classmen as part of the IB program. She was on the varsity sports team. There are no magic lines drawn in high school between one grade and another. Students move in peer groups which are not defined by age lines, and maturity levels at any particular age vary considerably. A law which draws sharp lines is not well suited for distinguishing which peer relationships in high school are, by law, rape and which are consensual - yet that is precisely what this law attempts to do.

We should not be making criminals out of high school students merely because they fall in love with a peer who is on the other side of an invisible line. (I am not supporting pedophilia - but I am suggesting that once you throw kids of similar ages in a melting pot together they do just that).