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The blame in statutory rape

Across the Pacific in California another rape case involved more judges than rapists. When a Sonoma County teen-ager allegedly forced a 16-year-old girl to make love to him on a park bench one spring night in 1978, he had no idea that his sexual initiative would eventually be weighed by the U.S. Supreme Court. But the girl told her story to the police. The boy was officially charged with statutory rape for having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. California is one of eleven states that still punish only the male in statutory rape cases. Accordingly, the boy challenged the prosecution on grounds that in penalizing only the male, California's law violates the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. Three state courts rejected his plea. Unwilling to take no for an answer, his lawyers took the case to the Supreme Court. Last week he lost again, 5 to 4.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens asked, "Would a rational parent making rules for the conduct of twin children of opposite sex simultaneously forbid the son and authorize the daughter to engage in conduct that is especially harmful to the daughter?"

But in the lead opinion, Justice William Rehnquist reasoned that the singling out of males for punishment makes sense, since women "suffer disproportionately the profound consequences of sexual activity." Added Rehnquist: "A criminal sanction imposed solely on males thus serves to roughly 'equalize' the deterrents on the sexes." Moreover, he said, if females were liable too, few would report the incidents, thus further frustrating attempts at enforcement of a law aimed at reducing teen-age pregnancies.

In their decision, the Justices seemed to be retreating a bit from earlier sex-discrimination decisions that the court now regards as too liberal. The message in last week's ruling, suggests Georgetown Law Professor Dennis Hutchinson: "We didn't really mean to go that far." ∎