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Juvenile Cases or Under 18 Sex Crimes

(The content below was transcribed from an interview done with Acacia Law. We think you'll find it much easier
and more enjoyable to read this way.)

Interviewer: How about dating sites? There's eHarmony, and match.com, and things like that. Do you see cases where people end up talking to minors they deliberately or inadvertently meet on these dating sites?

Acacia Law: I've seen it where they've inadvertently- there is a defense in this state- again, it's kind of a judgment call. If the person misrepresents their age, and I believe currently, it's if they're 16 years of age or older; essentially, if they misrepresent their age, it is a defense for them to be able to establish that they were misled. Okay? That circumstance will preclude them from being charged. There is, on the other hand, a difference between that and knowing for a fact that the individual is under age and on the dating site. If you know that, then you can't use it as an excuse that eHarmony, in fact, only is supposed to be presenting people who are 18 years of age or older. So, again, it's a judgment call- and all I can tell you is that in terms of how it's handled, there's a lot of discretion within the prosecutor's office in that regard.

Interviewer: I'm trying to think of another... it is scary- but I'm trying to cover all the bases that you might not normally cover.

Acacia Law: Sure, in order to answer your question about other situations. A lot of times I've seen, it's actually gotten to the point now where there is a defense technically that if you're in high school and age 18 and you're dating a girl who's 16 years of age or older and they have sexual contact that's consensual, that's pretty much something that's rarely pursued. But if they are under 16, it doesn't matter if you're 18 and a senior in high school and they're just a freshman, I've run into this before, and it's a crime, basically. It doesn't matter whether it was consensual or not, the law doesn't make a distinction- it's a strict liability. It's pretty rough.

Interviewer: I've heard in the news like teen sexting, take naked pictures of themselves and texted to someone they are interested in. What if both people are under the age of 18, what's the law in that case?

Acacia Law: Good question. Again- what that entails is partly what is the ‘age difference’- what is the maturity level of the individuals? Let me give you an example. You have- an 18 year old showing lewd pictures to a 16 year old, consensually- that's something that is going to be treated differently than a 17 or 16 year old sending lewd pictures to say, an eight year old or ten year old.

Interviewer: Hmm. Okay.

Acacia Law: The age difference, clearly the absolute distinction between pre-pubescent and pubescent juveniles is going to be something that will be factored in and obviously no one's going to buy that an eight year old is consensually and knowingly and intelligently engaging in lewd conduct with a 16 year old.

Interviewer: Right; exactly.

Acacia Law: So yes, there is, and I have dealt with this in juvenile court and sometimes even in adult court, depending on the circumstances, where essentially you have inappropriate contact between someone under the age of 18, and another person under the age of 18- who is usually significantly younger-

Interviewer: Oh, okay.

Acacia Law: -basically, the state has the discretion whether to bring it to adult court or work within the parameters of the juvenile system, and it depends on the age of the defendant. I think now it's either 14 or 15. If you hit 14 or 15 and engage in some conduct that's rather extreme in nature with respect to sex, sexual crimes, they won't hesitate to charge you in adult court. But it would have to be something major. It's frequently treated in juvenile court.

Interviewer: Okay, good. So we've been talking about luring. We've been talking about looking at or sharing lewd images of minors. What other sex crimes are there to talk about that are important, that you see frequently?

Acacia Law: What I see frequently besides what we've talked about is the situations where actually, believe it or not, parents intervene. They may not like- I know it sounds silly- but it happens all the time; parents may discover that their 16 year old daughter is dating a 20 year old, and they'll contact the police and have them charged. This is very, very common. It's fairly serious, actually, because the bottom line is that technically, legally, whether the girl might be consenting or not doesn't matter one bit, for purposes of the statute. Plus you have angry parents who are putting pressure on the prosecutors, and usually the Prosecutors don't have a whole lot of sympathy for that.

So, it's one of those types of occurrences that people don't realize, but I've dealt with so many times. That's why it comes to mind right now- is that a parent discovering their teenager dating someone in their early 20s, will call the police and they will be charged.

Interviewer: What will they be charged with?

Acacia Law: Well, they'll be charged with some sort of- it could be statutory rape, which again is strict liability and that has to do with the relative ages of the individuals. It could include any of those things that we previously discussed, any texts sent, anything that might be sexual in nature, photographs, the whole ‘shebang’.

In fact, one thing that I probably should have noted before was that, for each picture- let's say that you had two individuals in the circumstances we've described that have sent pictures back and forth, maybe a dozen times. Technically speaking, for each communication, it's a separate count. I have sat there and read through an indictment with 30 or 40 counts; one felony count charge per photograph or per statement. It really depends on the grand jury and the prosecutors bringing it. But obviously that is a very serious, serious indictment.

Interviewer: Wow.

Acacia Law: But to get back to what in reference I was saying before. There's sort of a grey area when you have juveniles. I call them juveniles if they are under 18 because technically under the statute that's what they are. Even if they are 16 or 17 and they are involved in a relationship with someone three, four years older than them- that's really pushing the line in terms of how it will be viewed. Obviously, there are some parents who simply don't care or don't find it offensive, or perhaps they themselves probably at some point may have dated someone who was a few years younger than them- whether they did it at that age or not is maybe a different ball game altogether.

Obviously, you have some parents who have absolutely no tolerance for that and are upset, and, probably understandably so, for some. On the other hand, you have the complexity of having this, for example, again I keep using girls because most of the sex crimes that I have that are charged are charged against males, or men or boys, basically. If you have a 16 year old girl, obviously she's not as clueless as an eight year old, in terms of what she's getting into.

Interviewer: Right.

Acacia Law: So, you have that complexity. They don't want to prosecute the guy they've been dating, even though he is 20. And so, you have that extra element of complexity which again will make each case different. Every case I've had- I've never had two cases exactly the same, when it comes to sex crimes. They all have different facts. I've been able to extract different defenses from different cases for different reasons, but they are all serious. That's for sure.

Interviewer: Well, one common theme I'm seeing in the light of... parents will, or people will call the police to help resolve a dispute, whatever it is. But once they are involved, it's out of everyone's hands and the situation can escalate and get so serious, far beyond what anyone ever wanted or intended. They intended to scare the person and here it seems that the stakes are the highest if that happens.

Acacia Law: Yeah, that's an excellent point and very true. A lot of times, a parent might say to themselves, ‘let me call the police on him, that'll scare him off, he won't date my daughter any more’. The problem is, once a parent, or, actually anybody, contacts the police- this includes domestic violence situations- once one of them contacts the police, the police arrive, find reasonable or probable cause that the crime has occurred, discretion has now gone out of the hands of the individual or individuals and is now strictly within the discretion of the State of Arizona.

Interviewer: Wow.

Acacia Law: That means that, if they want to drop the charges, if they don't want to be involved with the case, if they don't want to testify, it does not matter. The prosecuting office for whatever jurisdiction in Arizona, whether it is Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff, anywhere, they make the determination that a crime has been committed. They are completely indifferent to whether somebody meant it to go that far or not because they are treating it as a very serious offense.

I have had clients down here who have dated, for example, in the Phoenix area, who have dated girls just distantly at NAU in Flagstaff which is the university up there. I have had police officers drive all the way from Flagstaff to arrest them, to bring them up to Flagstaff and have them charged and incarcerated on account of a parent calling.

Interviewer: Wow.

Acacia Law: This is when the defendant was 19 and the alleged victim was 17. Now, the father in that case did not intend for that to occur, but it didn't matter what he wanted at that point. It was in the police's hands. The detective on the case, she decided unilaterally that she was going to nail this kid to the wall and, in fact, made sure that charges were brought and physically drove down all the way from Flag, to arrest him and bring him back up to Flagstaff. So, again, a lot of times people think when they are calling in that they can call off the dogs at any time. That's not the case. Once you involve the police, once you involve any sort of law enforcement, it's out of your hands.

Interviewer: Wow.

Acacia Law: The state can take over at any time, once they make a determination that there is probable cause that a crime has been committed. Your intent of just scaring somebody or your intent of just warning somebody off your daughter has now turned into a class two or class three felony.