Yup, you read that headline right: a British lawyer has called for the age of consent to be lowered to 13 because a dirty old man touching 8th graders’ boobs should be totally OK.
London lawyer Barbara Hewson penned an impassioned piece for a contrarian British publication called Spiked in which she wrote about the Jimmy Savile trial, or Operation Yewtree. Simply put, Yewtree investigated multiple allegations that a late British TV host had sexually abused many, many underage girls and boys. The whole trial has reignited concerns in the UK about adult sexual abuse of children and young adults
But now Hewson — A WOMAN!— is concerned that the UK is conducting its own witch hunt, falsely accusing adult men of being sexual predators. ”[T]he goings-on at the BBC in past decades are not a patch on what Stead exposed. Taking girls to one’s dressing room, bottom pinching and groping in cars hardly rank in the annals of depravity with flogging and rape in padded rooms,” she wites. “Touching a 17-year-old’s breast, kissing a 13-year-old, or putting one’s hand up a 16-year-old’s skirt, are not remotely comparable” to rape or gang rapes. And since that’s supposedly the only really bad way a young woman can be violated, she now advocates that they “remove complainant anonymity; introduce a strict statute of limitations for criminal prosecutions and civil actions; and reduce the age of consent to 13.” Keep reading »