This has ruined him for life so glad I'm not in today's dating world it ain't like my day get her number on a Saturday night have to wait until 7.30 Thursday evening to ring and get a second now it's quicker than instant coffee.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6679531...old-girl-jailed.html

Frightening!

Branded a peeedoh no one is held to account but the lad the girl and her parents should be under some kind of probation with some sort of licence so she cannot do this again.
The only target is this guy who is now behind bars and can't say he is a burgler to protect himself from some idiot that wants to harm him.
10 years register with plod popping in to see you unannounced for the next ten years, on licence with probation every week upon release, if he gets a girlfriend after release he has to tell her of his conviction pretty much by the second date and she will be interviewed by the ppu officers who will say something like
" you do realise it was a 12 year old child, you need to look for warning signs, here is my card any concerns contact us, are you really sure you want to be in a relationship with a convicted paedophile "

I note.
They have him 2 1/2 years = 30 months he will be on the sexual offender register for life.
I think his legal team need to go back and get some off his sentence at least one month as 29 months gives you a 10 year registration period or as I call it a sentence on top of a sentence.

Due to the restrictions placed by our laws we will never know the full facts...

.... Does ' I blame the parents spring to mind' ?

Or does 'did she really look of a legal age '?

Or does ,' this should have been sorted out with a bit of commonsense' ?

A prison sentence,and the huge efforts put into the sex offenders register should be a punishment.. deterrence... protection.. none of these fits in my view..

..a girl who obviously looks older...a prat who is so desperate to prove he can get a woman that he shares her photo to prove it...a mother who proves she cannot stop a daughter with a record of dodgy behaviour from doing these things.....

...and most probably a girl who has been bullied by social services and the court into prosecuting somebody....and this is what has changed her behaviour?

Thank God I'm celibate.

hedda wrote:
Thank God I'm celibate.

Thank God I'm halibut

I think M and Silent Minority have called this one correctly. It's very much as they say.


And before Holocaust21 chimes in... It's yet more indication that young people (especially girls who mature at an early age) do indeed want and enjoy sex. I think it's a personal decision. A 12 year old isn't necessariliy any less equipped to deal with the risks and complications of sex than an older person who's equally new to sex. I think we should grant people the status of individual, autonomous agents of free will (which we are) and treat them as such. That means, in this case and many others, addressing the girl's behaviour to equip her to make informed decisions about what she's doing. Criminalising someone else (like poor Mr Hodgson) for another person's life choices makes absolutely no sense to me at all, for reasons you can read about courtesy of the aforementioned Holocaust21
holocaust21.wordpress.com/2014/11/16/pro...s-their-refutations/

This case reminds me of a prosecution in the USA, again involving a 12 year old girl and an older man, 19 I think. To portray herself as older, she DROVE to his house in a stolen/borrowed/purloined car, showed him a fake ID and brought along a child cousin and told him she was her daughter. All pretty clear evidence, to the unsuspecting guy, that the girl is older. The problem is that in that US state, as in the UK, if a person is under 13, sexual activity with them becomes a strict liability criminal offence. That means that it is not legally allowed to say in your defence that he or she looked older or convinced you of same. Four howling problems with that:

1) Some under 13s do look older. We know that from our own observation of the world. At 12/13, I myself looked old enough to get served in pubs. On average, girls start puberty at 10/11 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puberty#cite_note-Kail-1 with several studies on age of female puberty)

2) This approach undermines the presumption of innocence, despite the weasel words from various Supreme Courts upholding the legislation.

3) It also violates the principle of no punishment except in law, a tenet of which is that the law must be clear enough for a person to know in advance the legal consequences of his proposed course of action. If, as in the above cases, there is a hidden factor unknowable to the defendant at the time that changes the legality of his actions, he cannot be held legally responsible for them.

4) It breaches the principle of equality of arms. The state is empowered to prosecute someone, and then further empowers itself by restricting the defendant's ability to defend himself using relevant evidence - a restriction they don't apply to themselves. Anyone fancy a boxing match where you have to keep one hand in your pocket, while your opponent fights two-handed?


My disturbing conclusion is that, if such prosecutions are so legally invalid, the men must be being prosecuted politically.

Didn't think it really needed to be pointed out, but since Randall seems to be deputising for the board's resident p-word, I will. 12-year-olds are not adults, no matter how sexually curious they may be, whether that is natural or has been "brought on" through abuse. And the fact that the 12-year-old may be female does not make them any more responsible for their actions. It's just "poor Mr Hodgson's" tough luck that he mistook a 12-year-old for a 13-year-old, or perhaps an 11-year old. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt and believe he thought she was of legal age…

Well said Randall, I couldn't have put it better myself

Clearly you said it so well, Randall, that Jo decided to call you the p-word because she didn't have any counter arguments. And no, I don't buy that stating "12-year-olds are not adults" is an argument. That's actually more of a tautology. And you'll note that even the feminist judge admitted that he believed she was over 18, but, even if you were correct in your belief that he was lying, it still doesn't prove he did anything wrong.

Jo wrote:
But let's give him the benefit of the doubt and believe he thought she was of legal age…

This is exactly my point. Sorry if it didn't come across clearly. The law does not allow us to give any benefit of the doubt to someone who has sex with a 12 year old. Strict liability for sex with an under 13 year old holds that no under 13 year old, in any circumstances could ever be mistaken by anyone (even a blind man) for older. This is no matter how much older the 12 year old looks, and no matter how convincingly he or she portrays an older age. Most of us would concede that 12 year olds can appear older through looks and behaviour as well as deliberate attempts to deceive, as above. Therefore the law creates a theoretical fiction that is not reflected in social reality. If you disagree, which you're perfectly entitled to, please explain why.

I'm not sure what you're trying to convey when you say that 12 year olds aren't adults. You seem to be making the argument that underage people can't consent to sex because they're underage, which is circular logic and invalid. Applying rules to individuals based on the imputed characteristics of the group to which they are perceived to belong is a tenet of Marxist social theory. It's something I strongly disagree with because it denies human beings their individuality. Therefore, I oppose making an age of consent line under which it's illegal to have sex. For the same reason, I oppose the alternative approach taken in some Islamic societies that deems a girl ready to enter into a marriage relationship upon her first menstruation.

As our dear host sometimes points out, people under the age of consent (down to age 10) ARE held criminally responsible for their actions in other circumstances, including the commission of so-called sexual offences. So in fact, we DO sometimes hold 12 year olds responsible for their sexual behaviour, although the position and its rationale seem muddled.

Leaving law aside, and considering responsibility from the point of view of both ethics and simple cause and consequence... I don't agree that people can be freed of all responsibility for their actions or events that befall them, just because there is some kind of written edict that says so. Apart from the most freakish of accidents, there is always some kind of causal sequence to events. It's not fault and blame: it's cause and consequence. In moral terms, we are perfectly free to disapprove of the behaviour of young people.

Last point and then I'll shut up... Let's suppose the behaviour of the young girl using adult dating apps to find and have sex with older men is indeed detrimental to her own wellbeing, and some kind of intervention is needed with the aim of protecting her health and personal safety. Putting Mr Hodgson in prison for 2.5 years does not appear to be a measure rationally connected to that aim. As mentioned above, it seems that there is disapproval or concern about the girl's behaviour, yet someone else is punished for it.

holocaust21 wrote:
Well said Randall, I couldn't have put it better myself



You did put it better yourself! That's why I linked to your article about age of consent arguments and their refutations.

I think the point here is that some children might appear adult but are mentally not mature enough to understand the consequences - i.e. pregnancy; superficially; disease; love and trust. I'm sure we all accept that generalities suit nobody. I've met many 25 year olds mentally ill equipped to get involved in sexual or emotional relationships. But the problem with laws is that, if individual, they become impossible to enforce. And an age of consent is meant to protect those who cannot understand ramifications and consequences. Many children simply do not understand that killing someone, for example, is wrong. Egged on by cartoons and films showing dead people leap back into life. Knife crime - predominantly by the very young - only stops when children can be educated that it's wrong.

JK2006 wrote:
Knife crime - predominantly by the very young - only stops when children can be educated that it's wrong.

Likewise with risky sexual behaviour, dangerous driving, drug abuse etc etc etc.

You extend my last point, JK. It's education that is the best means to guide youngsters to a successful sex life (whatever that means for them). NOT punishing another person.

Age of consent?
Guilty of murder at ten...but cannot consent to sex until sixteen?

Some countries have realised this, and taken steps as a result... Doctor King has written about this before...but the simplified headline grabbing press have made logic in any approach impossible.

Silent Minority wrote:
Age of consent?
Guilty of murder at ten...but cannot consent to sex until sixteen?

Some countries have realised this, and taken steps as a result... Doctor King has written about this before...but the simplified headline grabbing press have made logic in any approach impossible.

I am horrified that small children can be tried as adults for sexual crime and murder.

Without dehumanising them by absolving them of all responsibility for their actions, (which I think we do a bit) it must be possible to recognise the very different mental state and maturity?

25 is getting rather high to set the age of consent, don't you think JK? Everyone seems very prepared to say "our young people aren't mature enough, let's raise the age of consent, raise the school leaving age etc etc" but few seem prepared to ask "hold on a minute, 100 years ago what we now think of as little children were working in fields and raising families? Have we not created a society full of young people who's growth has been stunted?". I saw on the David Bowie articles posted on the other thread some of the Mail commentators were saying stuff like "ah, yes, well sex at 15 was OK then because we were all more mature! But kids these days aren't so it should be banned", which seems like a rather upside down way to look at it. If our kids aren't as mature then we should be worried about that, and perhaps lowering or abolishing the AOC is one way to help them mature faster, amongst, I suspect, many other sorely needed reforms that no one can be bothered to even contemplate let alone action.

holocaust21 wrote:
Have we not created a society full of young people who's growth has been stunted?

What we have is an increasing number of children over the age of 18. These are people who have never matured emotionally and mentally into adults, because they've not been guided into, and equipped for, adult life.

They've been indoctrinated that their failure effectively to meet the inevitable challenges of life is the result of someone else abusing, oppressing or discriminating against, them.

You make a fair point about past times when people went out to work, or war, or started families earlier. These things expose people to challenges with significant (or indeed ultimate) costs of failure. So there were more and greater imperatives to strive to improve one's circumstances and oneself: something that seems to have fallen out of fashion lately.