Man sentenced to life in prison for sex with 13 year old

Does anyone find this grossly excessive and unjust?
Yes, what this man did was wrong and probably should be punished. But life in prison?

A man was sentenced to life in prison for having sex with a 13 year old male.
The sex was "consensual" but some view this as "molestation" due to the boy's age.

At the time the man was already on probation for a previous conviction for a crime of the same nature.

This happened in Georgia, a state with notoriously harsh punishment on these sorts of things.


The Georgia Bureau of Investigations had received a cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on June 11, 2016 regarding "an inappropriate conversation" between the two, who had communicated on a gay dating app, Facebook, and text messages.
The man had requested that the child send him pictures of his penis, which the child did. In return, Harris sent the victim a picture of his face and his penis.
When a Georgia Bureau of Investigations agent served the man with a warrant, the suspect was asked if he had ever had sex with someone he knew was underage. The man nodded and said, "I made a mistake."

It looks like the man had served around 11 years in prison for the previous offence.

Fulton man gets life in prison for sex with gay teen | Project Q Atlanta

 

Just a theory, but I'm thinking the child may have been an African American child. If this was the case, the judge may have been disgusted by the combination of this being sex between an older person and a younger person (the man was 38 ), being gay, and being interracial sex on top of all of that.

Many African American children look and act a few years older than their age too.

I say this because this was near Atlanta with a very high African American population, and it's a lot more common for Black boys to go out looking for sex at that age than White children. The article does not give that specific information, however.

 

So the man was on probation and did it again? I don't feel sorry for him. This is wrong and disgusting.

The punishment may be harsh but he committed a crime and took that risk.

 

So….. A Paedophile

Hmmmm should a repeat offender Paedophile get life in prison?

Let me think

 

So we have a pedophile who rapes children. And he is a repeat offender who isn't going to change. Personally I'd have no problem with the death penalty for someone like him.

 

There was no rape.

What happened here was not exactly "molestation" in the usual sense.

The child was 13 years old.

Yes, some analogy can be made between this situation and molestation, and maybe someone could claim this does lie somewhere on the spectrum of molestation, but it's very close to the edge. If traditional molestation involves a man forcing himself on a 5 year old who's too young to know what's happening, then this is only 2 percent of that.

I think we can all infer that by 13 years old a child certainly already has some idea of what sex is and some great degree of mental consent is already there, if not legally.

And if this was an African American child, half these boys in these neighborhoods are already going out having sex by that age. That is another not completely insignificant factor that should be taken into account.


You might argue this man is likely to continue to have the same problem and do the same thing again and again, but this is still wrong. The level of punishment does not fit the crime.

The article does not give the details of his previous crime but I think we can infer the child in that situation may have been older than 13, since this man only spent 11 years in prison for that crime compared to being sentenced to life for this crime.

You will notice he was convicted of "aggravated child molestation", the same thing he was convicted of previously, which makes me strongly think his previous crime probably did not involve rape either and was of a similar nature.

This was not a case of a perpetrator forcing himself on to someone else. It was not rape. It was a case of what is referred to as "statutory rape".
Calling it "molestation" is mostly absurd. The child was already a teen.
"Molestation" implies the child is younger and doesn't have the mental capacity to understand what's going on or resist.

 

I guess you mean the homosexual part. Because, until 1995, Georgia's age of consent was 14. Hawaii lifted it's own low bar, from 14 to 16, in 2001.

<SNIP>
The last 2 states to raise its age of general consent from under 16 to 16 or higher were Georgia, which raised the age of consent from 14 to 16 in 1995, and Hawaii, which changed it from 14 to 16 in 2001. Age-of-consent laws were historically only applied when a female was younger than her male partner.
View attachment 152363
https://en.m.wikipedia.org › wiki
Ages of consent in the United States - Wikipedia
<END SNIP>

One caveat to this minimum age of 16, now, in the U.S., is Texas where, though the age of consent is 17, yet for the ages of 14, 15, & 16, they use a 3-year age window. IOW, up to 17, one can legally have relations with a 14 y.o., up to 18, w/ a 15 y.o., & until one is 19, w/a 16 y.o.

Sixteen is the age of consent in Canada & the minimum in most of Latin America. The exception is Mexico, which varies by state, but goes as low as 12. This ties it with 2 other countries, for the world's second-lowest age of consent (see below).

<SNIP (from website age of consent)>

The lowest Age of Consent in the world is 11, in Nigeria. The age of consent is 12 in the Philippines and Angola, and 13 in Burkina Faso, Comoros, Niger, and Japan. Japan often stands out as the only developed country on the list of lowest ages of consent, but local prefecture statutes in most areas of the country raise the effective age to 16-18.

Additionally, several Middle Eastern and African countries have no legal age of consent, but ban all sexual relations outside of marriage. This has raised concerns by many international organizations, especially in some countries where girls are married at as young as 9 or 10 years old. Countries with marriage-based ages of consent include Afghanistan, Iran, Kuwait, Libya, Maldives, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the UAE.
<End Snip>

Just thought you might be interested, as long as I was researching.

 

I don't believe that a 13 year old is capable of consenting to sex with an adult. Having sex with someone without consent is rape. Statutory rape is rape. I find it funny that people are more horrified by raping female teens than male ones. Imagine if this man had sex with a 13 year old girl, and this happened to multiple girls. Nobody would be complaining about his life sentence.

 

The court found there was and given an age disparity which always implies at least a power disparity then this is the position taken by a lot of courts

What was the child’s developmental age? I notice too that you are using the term child but according adult attributes

Now this bit is just plain racist

Didn’t bother googling did you?

https://www.georgiacriminallawyer.c...n-and-aggravated-child-molestation-in-georgia

 

WTF?

Is the OP seriously asking us to CONDONE a REPEAT offending PEDOPHILE?

 

Raping children is gross and unjust.....why are you on this guy's side??

 

I think they should have hung him. Not excessive at all

 

How easy to make up things rather than view the facts....justifying child rape should carry a life sentence

 

Dated 2009 but still...Low-income Kids Report First Sexual Intercourse At 12 Years Of Age In New National Study -- ScienceDaily

 

Why would you feel sorry for a child rapist?

Do you feel sorry for his victims?

Life in prison....he won't rape anymore children...

 

Some pedophiles are simply incorrigible, and they will never stop preying on children unless they are locked up. Clearly, this guy falls into that category. Serving 11 years in prison didn’t deter him from reoffending less than a year from the time of his release. A life sentence is really the only way to protect children from an offender like him.

 

You may want to read his post again.....

"I don't feel sorry for him".

 

Well, there is another way and it lets the taxpayer off a lifetime of bills...

 

I do not find it excessive, would only have issues with it if he was also a child, say a 13 and 14 year old dating and had consensual sex

my state the age of consent was 14 until a few years ago, when they changed it to 16 with a 5 year buffer, that is much better imo

 

I will apologize.

 

My abject apologies for mis-reading your post.

 

It's ok. We all do it. I'm far from perfect at reading.

 

I will never feel sorry for anyone who is sent to prison for it. I actually know people who have been raped and it's sad.

 

NO.

Do you think raping a child is grossly excessive and unjust?

Or just kinda naughty....??????????

 

That is an interesting finding, albeit not all that surprising. I'll note that the article's title makes it sound way worse than its data showed: the average age of first sex at 12.77 years, was not for all low-income kids, but for ONE IN FOUR surveyed children, in those 3 cities, between the ages of 11 and 16.