Correspondence
Even more against the stream
We all know the law is an ass, but when it comes to defining an
age of consent it is more like a badly assembled chimera. You
can become criminally responsible at the age of 8 or 10, liable
to criminal prosecution from the age of 12, legitimately have
sex at the age of 14 while on holiday in Germany, join the Army
at 16 and perhaps later die for your country, vote and purchase
alcohol or cigarettes at the age of 18, but not hire a car until the
age of 25. What an Alice in Wonderland world we live in! Logic
would suggest a similar age for all of these activities, perhaps
with some allowance for variation justifiable by the extent of
risk involved.
The appropriate legal age of sexual consent is not imme-
diately obvious. However, as sexual intercourse with a child
under the age of 13 amounts to statutory rape, this might
provide a logical starting point. Incidentally, when I last
checked, the lowest age of sexual consent in a European
country was actually 12 (in Vatican City, somewhat ironically).
Of course, in reality, the limited availability of parliamen-
tary time will make a logical alignment of the various ages for
consent a complete non-starter. So perhaps a better question is
‘Why have an age of consent at all?’ This allegedly offers
protection but in reality mainly just criminalises a substantial
proportion of the juvenile population and potentially even
criminalises an underage victim of a sexual assault. Surely
criminal responsibility should only rest with the perpetrator?
In this scenario, a perpetrator would commit a crime if, and
only if, a sexual act occurred in the absence of consent, and not
simply by reason of some arbitrary age. Can we not trust our
children to reach their own decisions and just make consent, or
rather lack of consent, the sole reason for engaging criminal
law?
Lachlan Campbell, Consultant Psychiatrist, Blackfriars Medico-Legal
doi:10.1192/bjb.2018.92
© The Author 2018. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-
commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of
Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in
order to create a derivative work.
Author reply: Lachlan Campbell has a point. My own view is
that children under the age of 14 are unlikely to have sufficient
emotional maturity or knowledge to make an informed decision
as to whether to engage in sexual intercourse.
Philip Graham, Emeritus Professor of Child Psychiatry, University College
doi:10.1192/bjb.2018.101
© The Author 2018. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-
commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of
Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in
order to create a derivative work.
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https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2018.92 Published online by Cambridge University Press
