I am hoping that someone will be able to advise me on a legal issue.
My maid’s son is charged with statutory rape and it appears he will likely get ‘tronk straf”.
• Clinton is a fine young man who works hard, keeps out of trouble, and occasionally house-sits for me.
• At age 17 Clinton was having consensual (ie, it wasn’t the first time) sex with a 12 yr old girl, the daughter of the family he was boarding with. When the pair were caught in the act, the mother cried rape, and Clinton was charged.
• There was no violence involved, the girl didn’t get hurt or pregnant. In my opinion they were doing what comes naturally, perhaps sooner than ideal, but hardly deserving a prison sentence and multiple court appearances. Imagine what it must cost the state to prosecute a case like this!
• This took place nearly 3 yrs ago, and has cost the family a lot of time and money traveling back & forth to court (180km away), about 8 times every year.
• Clinton has a legal aid lawyer, who changes every few months and consequently doesn’t seem to know much about the case.
Is there anything I can do? Will it help to get involved? It seems so unfair to put Clinton in jail, and will surely do him more harm than good.
What rwenzori said about paying for a lawyer, unfortunately for him, its against the law to have sex with a minor… In all honesty, if it was my daughter, I’d also have a fight to death to have him put away, preferably for life. On the other hand (considering I dont have a daughter), he screwed (no pun intended) up, and plenty of good kids make mistakes and have to pay dearly for it whilst the really horrid ones seem to get away with it all the time.
tbh at 17 I don’t see him actually getting “tronk straf” - I’d be very surprised if with a clean record and as a juvenile he gets anything other than a slap on the wrist…
I was under the impression that it is only considered statutory rape if the girl was under 12 years of age. You mentioned this happened nearly 3 years ago. Does this mean the girl is around 15 now? Surely she will testify in his case too? Statutory rape is considered a common law offense in South Africa, if I’m not mistaken, in which case the state needs to bring the case against the alleged offender, and if they do their research properly into what actually happened, it doesn’t sound to me as though there is a strong case against this young man. Good luck.
I could be wrong, but I’m under the impression the legal age is still 16, girls older than 12 are allowed to have an abortion and/or see a doctor about her own body without her parents knowledge though.
i agree with this. if he gets sent to jail, it will be a minimum security facility, with petty thieves. not hardened crims. he will even get the chance to study while in there. if he even gets sentenced to time at all. i dont think he will spend more than a a year at best. out on parole before he knows what hit him.
i hope this scares the living shit out of him. and i hope he tells all his friends.
if he is such a stand-up guy, then he should have had the brains and responseability to keep his pecker in his pants, especially if the girl is still in primary school. remember, in grade 7 (st 5), you turn 13… i doubt the poor girl even could get pregnant at that stage, she propably hasnt even started menstuating.
my other thought is: how the hell does a girl like that end up having sex at that age, if she wasnt pressurized by the boy? girls that age surely doesnt go looking for sex? or, she has been exposed to contact of a sexual nature, from very young (read molestation), so another man wanting sex from her, was nothing new.
in any case, it is very dodge, and this guy should have known better. i dont have mercy for him. and the consenuality of this whole drama, is rather suspicious to me.
and, i would like to point out, how the hell does a mother not know her 12 year old is having sex? where is this kid’s siblings/friends/neighbour/grandparents? you want to seriously tell me, a child, who hasnt learnt yet how to be sneaky and carefull, manages to have sex and nobody knows? i really think the parents saw a gap to make money out this okie. and just waiting for the opportunity for catch them in the act.
if he is such a stand-up guy, then he should have had the brains and responseability to keep his pecker in his pants, especially if the girl is still in primary school. remember, in grade 7 (st 5), you turn 13.... i doubt the poor girl even could get pregnant at that stage, she propably hasnt even started menstuating
It’s a mess, and Clinton screwed up, but in his defence he was a bit of an innocent himself, at 17. His mother keeps the household (7 of them in a one-room house a bit bigger than a single garage) fairly on the straight and narrow and Clinton has always been the dutiful elder son who washes the school clothes and looks after the rest until Mom gets home. To his credit he hasn’t used the incident as an excuse to screw up further.
my other thought is: how the hell does a girl like that end up having sex at that age, if she wasnt pressurized by the boy?
Young girls sometimes ask for it, without knowing quite what it is they’re asking for. If a girl develops a ‘crush’ on a man or boy it can be embarrassing all round as the girl can flirt quite outrageously. And in an unsupervised situation, anything is possible.
Also Clinton (and the girl, Micayla) have grown up in a crowded community where sex is in your face, both at home and on the street. I guess children are forced to develop earlier in such circumstances. Certainly, incest and teenage pregnancies are rife in this area. HIV as well, though people don’t talk about it much. It’s a problem: too many people living on top of each other, no space for privacy, lots of alcohol abuse.