There's a 19-year old in the family (non-JW) who got his 16-year old girlfriend pregnant. From what I can tell, that could be considered criminal sexual abuse in Illinois with a potential sentence of up to a year in prison.
Anybody know anything about this? Especially in Illinois?
Is the sort of thing where he signs the birth certificate, the hospital looks at the ages and calls the cops? Or is this sort of thing generally un-enforced if everything was consensual and the parents aren't trying to punish somebody?
At this point, they plan to keep and raise the baby. Wouldn't have been my choice, but the odds are already against them staying together (being so young) and neither of them with a job. A prison sentence would probably make things really hard on them and guarantee a single-parent home.
So if anybody knows what might actually trigger a statutory rape charge, please share, even if it's not for Illinois.
Of course, the prison sentence for this category says "up to 1 year". It's a category where the girl is at least post puberty and it's a guy within 5 years of age. It's mostly boyfriend/girlfriends that are going to fit into this. Maybe under the circumstances, the judge could say "no jail time".
But then there's the "sex offender" tag. Unlike some of the other names for offenses, the ones involving basically teens and/or teens close in age don't carry the word "criminal" in the name of the offense. Does this imply a different category that may not get him on a sex offenders list?
Never liked the fact that the sex offender database included consensual teens that are close in age and it doesn't always show you enough info to let you know that. That's a guy having sex with his girlfriend, not some dangerous pervert who might try to rape one of my children. There's enough of the real perverts around, don't clutter sex offender lists with consensual couples who committed "technical rape".