\n<\/p>\n
Allegations against Russell Brand and, separately, David Walliams, which he denies, have led to calls for greater legal protection for 16- and 17-year-olds from sexual exploitation by older adults.<\/p>\n
A staggered consent law is one route favoured by campaigners, supported by some Labour MPs. Claire Waxman, the victims\u2019 commissioner for England and Wales, has called for \u201cserious conversations\u201d on the potential for legislative change.<\/p>\n
The barrister Charlotte Proudman, who specialises in law regarding violence against women and girls, said: \u201cStaggered, or graduated, age of consent means that the law takes account of the age difference between sexual partners, rather than treating 16 as the point at which a child can legally consent to sexual activity with someone of any age.<\/p>\n
\u201cA sexual relationship between a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old is fundamentally different from one between a 16-year-old girl and a 50-year-old man.\u201d<\/p>\n
A 16-year-old cannot buy alcohol or cigarettes, but someone decades older can legally have sex with them. \u201cThe law does not adequately recognise the significant power imbalance between children and much older adults, particularly where grooming, financial dependence, celebrity status or emotional manipulation are involved,\u201d Proudman said.<\/p>\n
A move to staggered consent \u201cwould place responsibility on the older adult\u201d, she said, rather than requiring a teenage complainant to demonstrate grooming, coercion or exploitation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not about denying young people sexual autonomy,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is about recognising that consent must be understood in the context of age, maturity, vulnerability and power.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Close the Consent Gap campaign proposes a staggered age of consent making it a criminal offence for a 16- or 17-year-old to consent to sexual activity with anyone more than three years their senior.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example, a consensual relationship between two teenagers close in age would remain lawful, whereas sexual activity between a 16-year-old and a 35-year-old would be prohibited,\u201d said the campaign\u2019s founder, Layla Stone.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery other framework of the law recognises 16- and 17-year-olds as children. We want the law to recognise children \u2013 16 and 17 years old \u2013 as children who need to be protected in all frameworks of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stone said there could be a \u201chuge power imbalance\u201d between a 16-year-old living at home and a 21-year-old with money and independence.<\/p>\n
The law on the issue in the rest of the world is complex and varied. Some countries have extra safeguards built in for 16- and 17-year-olds. Canada, for example, recognises age difference as a factor in determining exploitation for this age group. For 14- and 15-year-olds, Canadian law criminalises any sexual activity if a partner is five or more years older.<\/p>\n
Prof Roger Ingham, the director of the Centre for Sexual Health Research at the University of Southampton, said: \u201cMy question, as a researcher, is: what is the evidence that it actually works or doesn\u2019t work to protect young people?\u201d<\/p>\n
He said there was no strong evidence that different countries with different ages had completely different patterns of sexual behaviour or outcomes. But he said it was a difficult question to answer \u201cbecause a lot of these cases are simply not reported\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ingham said \u201ctinkering with the law\u201d could divert attention from other efforts, including better sex education, and risked young people avoiding seeking contraceptive advice, or other support they needed, if their relationship was deemed illegal.<\/p>\n
Dr Sophie King-Hill, an associate professor at the University of Birmingham researching sexual behaviour of children and young people, said people were \u201clooking for fixes, looking for blame, looking for gaps in the law\u201d, but she also questioned where the evidence was that it worked.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we\u2019re looking at preventing grooming and preventing young people being exploited, we\u2019ve got to be really careful not to confuse this changing of the law with solving the problem,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrooming, coercion, manipulation and abuse of power don\u2019t suddenly begin at 16. I can see where it\u2019s coming from. People feel like they need to do something, and I\u2019m not necessarily opposed to it in its totality, but I think it\u2019s really naive to see it as such a solution to something that\u2019s really complex and complicated within society.\u201d<\/p>\n
King-Hill said it could create a false sense of protection for young people, and it risked children and young people not coming forward \u201cbecause they\u2019ll be worried they\u2019ve broken the law\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think from my research perspective and the work that I\u2019ve carried out, you\u2019ve got to do things like this really carefully, because you can inadvertently make things worse or oversimplify a very complex and complicated problem.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Allegations against Russell Brand and, separately, David Walliams, which he denies, have led to calls for greater legal protection for 16- and 17-year-olds from sexual exploitation by older adults. A staggered consent law is one route favoured by campaigners, supported by some Labour MPs. Claire Waxman, the victims\u2019 commissioner for England and Wales, has called<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[2822,3361,680,5623,175,7728,25432,25422],"class_list":{"0":"post-52661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-age","9":"tag-allegations","10":"tag-calls","11":"tag-consent","12":"tag-law","13":"tag-prompt","14":"tag-staggered","15":"tag-walliams"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}