Victim or perpetrator? How about both!

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Remember in the movie Adaptation, the main character's brother has this idea for a screenplay called The Three? It's about a detective trying to track down a serial killer before he kills his next victim. Pretty standard, right? The twist is that the detective, serial killer, and victim, are all actually the same person. Whoa, dude. Fight Club's got nothin' on that one.

Well, this isn't quite that weird. But apparently, Utah legal authorities are somewhat perplexed by a situation in which a 13-year-old girl and her 12-year-old boyfriend are both simultaneously the perpetrators and victims of the same crime: having sex with each other (HT: Feministing):
Utah Supreme Court justices acknowledged Tuesday that they were struggling to wrap their minds around the concept that a 13-year-old Ogden girl could be both an offender and a victim for the same act - in this case, having consensual sex with her 12-year-old boyfriend.

The girl was put in this odd position because she was found guilty of violating a state law that prohibits sex with someone under age 14. She also was the victim in the case against her boyfriend, who was found guilty of the same violation by engaging in sexual activity with her.
I'm not really sure what great insight I'm trying to communicate by posting this story on my blog. Probably it's just lurid tabloid sensationalism. Maybe my readers can help.

Comments

Miguel said…
Another level of irony on The Three: Adaptation writer Charlie Kaufmann was at one time hired to work on an, um, adaptation of A Scanner Darkly - a pretty good book whose plot has a lot in common with The Three. (The version that was released this year was not his script).
7:26 PM, December 11, 2006
AutismNewsBeat said…
I'm surprised that prosecutors, even ones in Utah, would go after this case. The whole point of statutory rape laws is that the courts assume children lack the capacity to consent to sex. So here we have two inviduals who both lack capacity to consent, yet somehow both have the capacity to understand the consequences of the sex act.
10:05 PM, December 11, 2006
AutismNewsBeat said…
And does anyone see the irony in that red state Utah's age of consent is 14, while here in my liberal commie pinko state of Wisconsin it's 18? I suppose that can be blamed on socialist meddling with personal choice. No, wait, that can't be it.
10:09 PM, December 11, 2006
Zachary Drake said…
Hey Miguel, I didn't know that. I liked the version of A Scanner Darkly that came out. It was very "Dickian".

Heraldblog, yes, it is ironic that these kids are being prosecuted under a law designed to protect them.

As far as the 14 in red state vs. 18 in blue state difference, one of my very first blog posts attempted to address this topic.
11:53 PM, December 11, 2006
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