The Curious Case Of Courtney Stodden
How Does A 51 Year Old Man Not Go To Prison For Having Sex With A Minor?
Statutory rape is legally defined as the non-forcible sexual activity between a minor who is legally unable to give consent and an adult who has engaged in sex with this person.
Most district attorney’s will tell that statutory rape is what they call a “wobbler”, that depending on mitigating circumstances - such as the age difference between the adult and minor - is the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony.
Here in my home state of California that age difference is ten years and with that comes both prison time and a permanent place on a sex offender registry if you are so much as as ten years and one day over.
In California, as well as other jurisdictions, the age of consent is tied to the concept of mental or functional age which is generally interpreted to mean that the victim can be of any chronological age but their mental age (as set by clinical diagnosis) makes them unable to consent to any sexual activity - a 35 year old man with the mental capacity, or age, of a child of seven is legally incapable of consenting to sex.
Consensual teenage sex, however, is quite common. In 1995 a survey study revealed that over half the teenage adolescents in the United States have had sexual intercourse by the age of sixteen and, if we extrapolate from that number we find there are over 7 million sexual encounters of this type every year that legally fit the definition of statutory rape.
Clearly though, most of these incidents of statutory rape are never prosecuted, no arrests made because, depending on where you are geographically in the United States, one set of laws in Texas aren’t the same as New York or Illinois but, overall, the law is clearly intended to punish adults who would otherwise take sexual advantage of a minor.
As in California, other states set statutory minimum difference of ages between what they consider to be the adult and minor. As I said in California, that’s ten years. If the age difference between the adult and the minor is within ten years it’s a misdemeanor offense.
We generally refer to this as the “Romeo and Juliet” clause and, assuming we all know the story of Romeo and Juliet, a legal presumption is made that so long as a couple are within the legal span of years apart in ages it is presumed they are “in love”.
Being in love, however, isn’t without legal consequences: you can still be incarcerated and/or fined but those penalties are far less severe than the ones that should have been meted out to one Douglas Anthony Hutchinson.
Doug Hutchinson, according to Wikipedia, is a character actor who played such roles as Obie Jameson in The Chocolate War and Percy Wetmore in The Green Mile and while I do remember the Percy Wetmore character, he is most notable for having had a relationship, clearly sexual and very public, with Courtney Alexis Stodden.
I’m not going to rehash the history between Hutchinson and Stodden. Much has been said, much has written about and by now everyone pretty much knows their story and, if you don’t, there’s always your friend Google but suffice to say I had to wonder how it could have been that a 51 year old man was able to carry on a relationship, clearly even going so far as to have sex with a young woman 35 years his junior in an age gap that should have landed him in or under a prison for the rest of his natural life as there is no presumption, legal or otherwise, that Hutchinson and Stodden were in love?
He legally married her.
Marriage As An Affirmative Defense To Statutory Rape
I used to think there was a minimum statutory age limit on how young one could get married and I used to think that it was 18, at the minimum but I have since learned that there exists an exception to that law not only in 44 other states but also in California.
With permission and consent from either or both parents and a court order from a judge a minor is now legally emancipated as an adult which has the effect of being able to consent to having sex with other adults of any age and clears the way for said emancipated minor to wed.
At first I thought this has to be a product of intense lobbying from various evangelical Christian interests as Courtney’s parents, both devout, who left the decision to her to continue a relationship with Hutchinson because of her own devout Christian beliefs (who, by now, had been actively courting Courtney for months in full view and with full knowledge of Stodden’s mother Krista who had been monitoring the whole time) and - what has to be a clear cut case of the way a groomer grooms both a child and the parents - managed to convince Courtney’s parents that he, too, was “In Christ” and that he would break off the relationship if it met with their disapproval.
It should have ended right then and there, right? Any parent in their right mind should have sent this lecherous old geezer packing, right? Any parent in their right mind would have Alerted The Authorities immediately upon learning about what Hutchinson was getting up to with their Courtney, right? Because, as parents, you’re supposed to protect your children from predators, right?
Right?
And That’s When Things Got Out Of Control…
Remember I had just wrote that I believed the pushback on California’s attempt to raise the minimum age of marriage to 18 and do away with the minor parental consent condition was a pushback from evangelical interests?
In 2018, California Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) proposed a law, SB 273, that would have barred all marriages under age 18. The proposal faced unexpected pushback from several civil rights groups, including Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Children’s Law Center of California.
In a statement opposing the proposed ban, the ACLU said California already has sufficient legal and policy protections in place to protect youth from abuse, and that the data did not indicate that coerced marriage of minors is a widespread problem. Enacting the ban on marriages of minors could drive young people already in abusive relationships further underground, and parents intent on coercing minor children into marriage could simply resort to unofficial ceremonies — away from the scrutiny of the courts. Additionally, removing the option to marry before age 18 could prevent young people who want to marry from doing so, the organization said.
They, at least, have some sense in Washington state where Courtney is from: a minor has to be at least 17 and fully emancipated before she can enter into marriage but in California, no such “age floor” for marriage exists as a 9 year old can theoretically, and with parental consent from one or both parents and a court order be emancipated as an adult.
That’s right - a 9 year old child with parental consent and a court order could, in theory, be raised to the capacity and standing as an adult in California at which time that 9 year old child could freely consent to having sex with an adult.
All perfectly legal and yeah, it’s immoral and unethical but have you ever heard of Moral or Ethical Court? Moral or Ethical Police?
Now, we would think that no parent (at least none in their right minds) would EVER consent to allow their 9 year old daughter and certainly no judge would EVER sign off on such a request but this supposes that all the actors along the chain of these horrible events would be acting in rational self-interests and the interests of their child.
I want you to imagine for a moment the most witless, most dense, most barely sentient person you know. It could be a family member, it could be someone you work with, even a friend and then I want you to imagine that person could, under the right set of circumstances and beliefs, give away their child to a predacious groomer and convince a judge it right for them to do so.
Growing up, Sara Tasneem dreamed of finishing high school and joining the U.S. Air Force. But those dreams were cut short when, at 15 years old, her father forced her to marry a 28-year-old stranger at a religious ceremony in Los Angeles. Her father was part of a cult, Tasneem said. After the ceremony, Tasneem’s new husband took her to another country and impregnated her. The marriage was formalized in Reno, Nev., when they returned six months later. At the time, all her husband needed was a signed permission slip from her dad, Tasneem said. Nevada now prohibits marriages involving people under age 17, but she believes the marriage could just as easily have taken place in California, given the state’s lack of a minimum marriage age.
Tasneem suffered domestic abuse and bore two children by the time she was 19. It took her seven years to escape the marriage, and another three to finalize the divorce, she said. After that, she spent a decade rebuilding her life and healing from the emotional trauma.
A recent study conducted by McGill University and other research entities estimates that almost 23,600 child marriages took place in California between 2000 and 2018. Those figures were based on U.S. Census Bureau data and the number of child marriages reported in other states.
Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the study found that the vast majority of minors married across the country were girls wed to older men (on average four years older). Most were 16 or 17 years old, but more than 9,000 marriages involved children under 16. These included 1,233 children age 14, 78 age 13, and five 10-year-olds.
As For Courtney…
Predictably, having been victimized by a groomer (which is exactly what Courtney called him in March of 2020 on her Instagram page), really does a number on you and having been completely fucked with by this man and by the abuse she suffered at his hands, Courtney has come out as non-binary.
I think I can understand why: she saw firsthand the experience of living as a married woman and that the experience was so horrifying she decided to opt out of her sex based oppression because being a woman is wrong.
And that’s a horrible feeling so to escape it she has self identified into something other than.
But there is something that gives me hope: though she calls herself non-binary she very much looks like and presents as a woman, precisely because she is and that she is currently engaged to Chris Sheng, a visible sign that she may someday reclaim her womanhood.
I prefer you don’t take my word for it. See for yourself California law that allows an adult to legally have consensual sex with a minor and, as always, Google Is Your Friend.
For more on this topic, check out this organization trying to raise the minimum age to 18, state by state: unchainedatlast.org One thing I learned from them is that teens who are trying to escape their abusive husbands can find themselves turned away from domestic violence shelters because they are underage.