That sixteen year old boys can and do father children is not especially newsworthy, but this news item seems to have caught the attention of the public because the mother is 28, and was the father’s high school teacher:
A 28-year-old teacher in California was placed on administrative leave after she gave birth to a baby fathered by one of her students, police said.
Laura Elizabeth Whitehurst was arrested Monday for her alleged sexual relationship last summer with the teen who was 16 at the time, The (Riverside, Calif.) Press-Enterprise reported Tuesday. Police confirmed the teen is the father of the baby born June 18.
Whitehurst was released on $25,000 bail Monday evening, the newspaper said. Charges have not been filed.
The Citrus Valley High School teacher served as an adviser for a school organization in which the student participated, said Redlands police spokesman Carl Baker.
And I’ll just bet she gave him some delicious “advice.”
Had this not occurred in California, if the boy was 16 when the sexual activity took place, the woman would not have committed a crime, because in a majority of states, the age of consent is 16. She might have run afoul of various “corrupting the morals of a minor” laws, but she would not have been chargeable with statutory rape.
In California, however, she is a rapist.
What I find more intriguing is what the news reports do not mention. Under the laws of most states (including California), the boy and/or his parents are legally liable to pay child support. Apparently his status as a rape victim is irrelevant.
I knew a homeless guy in California who was tormented for years as a deadbeat dad for fathering a child when he was under 18 with a woman over 21. He was not allowed to see his son, and the child support liability just accrued endlessly, making him unemployable. Like many deadbeat non-custodial dads, he drowned his pain with booze, and lived in the street. Most people consider men like that to be hopeless losers, and while they have a point, it often does not occur to them that the state has a fairly major role in fostering and perpetuating this loser mentality. The ordinary remedy for bad decisions — bankruptcy — is not available to them. They lose their ability to make a living because employers don’t want to hire people subject to wage garnishment (for obvious reasons), and many states take away whatever professional licenses they held (and even drivers’ licenses) to further “motivate” them to pay up what often amounts to tens of thousands of dollars. And unlike regular debtors, they are often imprisoned. Which creates a powerful motivation for such men to live outside of society’s radar. I have heard this same story from a number of homeless guys. Ironically, the lefty activists who call them victims are often advocates of the very policies which keep them down, but just try talking to them about that! They see “deadbeat dads” as evil men, and “the homeless” as victims in need of “help.” Go figure. (I have long since despaired of making any sense out of such liberal inconsistencies.)
So, before even starting adult life, that California boy is both victim and bad guy — and well on his way to financial if not emotional ruin.
MORE: Questioning whether such things are urban legends, Glenn Reynolds links a paper titled Fatherhood by Conscription: Nonconsensual Insemination and the Duty of Child Support, which raises an interesting legal point:
Few would argue with the proposition that, if a man voluntarily has sex with a woman and a child results, then he should be liable for child support. The problem with the court’s current approach, however, is that the standard is so strict that even those men who never consented to the sexual act that caused the pregnancy are nonetheless liable for the support of the resulting child. These men include males who became fathers as a result of statutory rape and also adult males who became fathers either as a result of sexual assault or having their sperm stolen and used by a woman for purposes of self-insemination. In all such cases, these “fathers” have been held liable for child support.
The purpose then of this article is, first, to underscore the criticisms that other commentators have raised on how the strict liability approach poses a grave injustice not only to the men who are pressed into the obligations of fatherhood but also to society, which has an interest in protecting all citizens from sexual assault. More importantly, however, I also offer a new objection and, on that basis, a proposed solution. Specifically, the courts’ justification that all children are entitled to support from both biological parents has been seriously undermined by the laws regulating artificial insemination. In that context, a man (regardless of whether he is the sperm donor or the non-donor husband of the inseminated female) only becomes the legal father of an artificially inseminated child if he affirmatively consents. I argue that it is incongruous to allow exceptions for formal sperm donors yet wholesale deny similar protections for those who, although not in the setting of a sperm bank, never consented to the use of their sperm. Accordingly, I propose a solution whereby courts adopt an approach similar (albeit narrower) to that used in artificial insemination cases to adjudicate child support claims against those men who were forced into fatherhood as a result of nonconsensual insemination.
Not that fairness matters, but it sounds fair to me.