aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

USA Today on defining teens as sex offenders

In a piece about states criminalizing kids for consensual sex, here’s what is said about Georgia:

Officials who say punishment has gone too far cite the case of Genarlow Wilson, who is serving a 10-year sentence in Georgia for receiving oral sex at a party from a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.

“We’re reliving the crucible,” says New Hampshire state Rep. Lee Hammond, a Democrat. Once on a public registry, he says, a teen’s future can change dramatically. “You can hang up a lot of careers.”

“There’s been a sea change in attitudes about juvenile sex offending,” says David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center. He says schools and therapists take even lesser incidents, such as touching, more seriously. [...]

Some state officials say teens, even in consensual sex cases, deserve what they get.

State Sen. Eric Johnson, a Republican in Georgia, disagrees with colleagues who say Genarlow Wilson was unfairly punished. “There’s no evidence anyone is in jail because two young lovers got overheated in the back seat of a car,” he says.