

So, the age is 12 years if one is within 4 years of the 12-to-15-year-old's age, 16 under all other circumstances.

2243(a) refers to situations where such younger person is under the age of 16 years, has attained 12 years of age, and the older person is more than 4 years older than the 12-to-15-year-old (children under 12 are handled under 18 U.S.C. Since 2005, states have been enacting Jessica's Law statutes, which provide for lengthy penalties (often a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison and lifetime electronic monitoring) for the most aggravated forms of child sexual abuse (usually of a child under age 12). Limon (2005), the Kansas Supreme Court used Lawrence as a precedent to overturn the state's "Romeo and Juliet" law, which prescribed lesser penalties for heterosexual than homosexual acts of similar age of consent-related offenses. states, District of Columbia, and territories, under the U.S. On June 26, 2003, both heterosexual and homosexual sodomy became legal (between non-commercial, consenting adults in private) in all U.S. Previously some of these statutes only applied to heterosexual sex, leaving homosexual sex in the same age range open to prosecution. Kercher of the Criminal Justice Center of Sam Houston State University wrote that these laws are often referred to as "Romeo and Juliet laws", though they defined Romeo and Juliet as only referring to an affirmative defense against prosecution. Ī backlash among the public occurred when some teenagers engaging in close-in-age relationships received punishments perceived by the public to be disproportionate, and thus age-gap provisions were added to reduce or eliminate penalties if the two parties are close in age. After the 1995 Landry and Forrest study concluded that men aged 20 and older produced half of the teenage pregnancies of girls between 15 and 17, states began to more stringently enforce age-of-consent laws to combat teenage pregnancy in addition to preventing adults from taking advantage of minors. The laws were designed to prosecute persons much older than their victims rather than teenagers close in age therefore prosecutors rarely pursued teenagers in relationships with other teenagers even though some laws made close-in-age teenage relationships illegal. In 1998 Mississippi became the last state to remove the chastity provision from its code. Until the late 20th century many states had provisions requiring that the teenage girl must be of "chaste character" in order for the sexual conduct to be considered criminal. By 2015 ages of consent were gender independent. Īge-of-consent laws historically only applied when a female was younger than her male partner. The last two states to raise their age of general consent from under 16 to 16 or higher were Georgia, which raised the age of consent from 14 to 16 in 1995, and Hawaii, which changed it from 14 to 16 in 2001. Small adjustments to these laws occurred after 1920. By 1920, 26 states had an age of consent at 16, 21 states had an age of consent at 18, and one state (Georgia) had an age of consent at 14.

during the late 19th century and the early 20th century. The ages of consent were raised across the U.S. In 1880, the ages of consent were set at 10 or 12 in most states, with the exception of Delaware where it was 7. states, the laws have widely varied across the country in the past. While the unrestricted age of consent is between 16 and 18 in all U.S. Unrestricted: age from which one is deemed able to consent to having sex with anyone else at or above the age of consent or the marriageable age if they must be married.Restricted by authority: younger partner is deemed able to consent to having sex with an older one as long as the latter is not in a position of trust or authority, or is not recognised to be abusing the inexperience of the younger one.Restricted by age difference: younger partner is deemed able to consent to having sex with an older one as long as their age difference does not exceed a specified amount.In some places, civil and criminal laws within the same state conflict with each other. Depending on the jurisdiction, the legal age of consent is between 16 and 18. In the United States, each state and territory sets the age of consent either by statute or the common law applies, and there are several federal statutes related to protecting minors from sexual predators.
