Alledged gang-raped girl charged with statutory rape

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This story appeared this morning on the front page of the South African newspaper the Star. What happened was that an under-age girl accused two under-age boys of raping her on a school playground while other kids watched and some recorded the incident on their cellphones. She did this after the video started getting circulated. However after the prosecutors decided it was consensual, they decided to charge all three of them with statutory rape. Here's the original article (Note: you have to click on the image to enlargen it to read the article):

http://thestar.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx.

Later, the girl appears to have admitted to having consensual sex with the boys. There is supposed to be a near-age exemption where statutory rape doesn't apply if they are within a two year age gap with each other, however the Child Justice Act which was effective since only April this year makes it a crime to consent to sex while under-age. Here's the later article that tells about the girl admitting to consensual sex with the boys:

http://thestar.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx.

Just to point out. If people don't read those articles before tomorrow, they will be replaced by different stories.

what a mess.

The relevant articles are no longer on the front page. However, you can still find them if you type "Jules High School" in the search bar at the top and check search in the last 3 days:

http://thestar.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx.

Anyway, the latest is that the charges are dropped and the teenagers will be put through some kind of program.

Yes, it is. There's a funny Zapiro cartoon about this. Sorry, Zapiro's site never lets me post images from there so here's the link:

http://www.zapiro.com/cartoon/183571-101118mg

Charging teens with statutory rape of each other is like charging somebody who failed a suicide attempt with attempted murder.

It could easily happen in my country. You know how crazy our system is (PC madness).

^
Suicide used to be criminalised under English law - they changed it the '60s I think.

A year or so ago in America there was a story about a 15 year old girl putting naked pictures of herself online.

They charged her with producing "kiddie porn" and "corrupting a minor" (herself)!

So now she is on the registered sex offenders list!! !

I a way, it seems kind of silly to be a victim and a perpetrator of the same crime.

If what I've read is correct, then the punishment for attempting suicide was.. death.

Apparantly in New York, the penalty for jumping off a building is death.

To punish attempting to die with death is.. highly illogical.

Give the people what they want?

Pretty sure attempt of suicide is a crime in many places.

Well, you know, if it would be legal for underage teens to have consentual sex, then we would have a lot of underage teens having sex together which would be SOO different to what happens now.

Wrong. Underage teens likely have sex anyway but just don't talk about it. In any case it's more appropriate to deal with teenagers having sex through education rather than through the judiciary. The purpose of statutory rape laws are more to protect minors from the sexual exploitation of adults.