1. A Minor Charged With Statutory Rape?
When I was living out in Los Angeles, California back in the 1990s, a story that surfaced locally and nationally in both the press and the media was about a group of middle-school and high-school boys that called themselves the Spur Posse. They had a score system for every underage girl with whom they had sexual intercourse. These events all took place in Lakewood, California.
A group of schoolgirls finally lodged complaints against them with the local authorities and made allegations against them of forcible rape. Arrests were made. The district attorney decided that prosecuting a group of teenage boys for having sexual intercourse with adolescent girls was the uncool thing for her to do, and she was unable to find any evidence of forcible rape. However, one charge did stick.
One of the members of the Spur Posse who was 17 years old mistook a 10-year-old girl for 15 years old, and he had sexual relations with her. He was eventually convicted of Lewd And Lascivious Acts With A Child Under 14, and he had to serve a modest amount of time in a juvenile detention facility.
The scandal drew nationwide attention not only from the news media but also from publicists and tabloid journalists. A number of daytime talk-show hosts even invited the Spur Posse to appear on their programs as guests. The media frenzy became overwhelming for everyone, especially in Southern California.
It should be noted that back then, teenage boys too young to vote were not able to resort to any Romeo-and-Juliet laws to defend themselves legally against sex charges involving female minors in California. However, they were lucky enough that the district attorney wasn't in favor of prosecuting teenagers for having sex with other teenagers.
Reality has it that most California law-enforcement officials and prosecutors didn't like the idea of arresting underage teenage boys for having consensual sex with adolescent girls, because they feared that not before long they'd be expected to throw their own teenage sons in jail for having consensual relations with adolescent girls younger than the statutory age of consent.
The biggest excuse for the Spur Posse's behavior that got thrown around was, "Boys will be boys." On one of the daytime talk shows, an angry mother yelled at the Spur Posse members from the audience and warned them to stay out of her neighborhood.
It should be noted that California used to have the most ridiculous statutory-rape laws in the nation. Then again, I've never really been a fan of American statutory-rape laws.
Anyhow, so many years ago a 14-year-old boy could have been arrested for statutory rape merely for having sexual intercourse with a 17-year-old girl. How ridiculous is it for a young boy to be treated as a sex criminal for having consensual sex with a girl three years older than him? Luckily, California has come a long way with its statutory-rape laws since then.
Many events that shape our nation's statutory-rape laws have happened since then in connection with how the law treats underage boys who mess with jailbait, so to speak. The state of Georgia is a good example of a jurisdiction that has not gone so leniently on underage offenders for "statutory rape." There was a 17-year-old boy who was convicted of statutory rape and child molestation merely for having consensual relations with a 15-year-old girl there in Georgia a little over 20 years ago.
The rapid evolution of social media on the Internet within the past 15 to 20 years has fueled interesting changes in sex laws throughout the United States. There has been a recent case in which Georgia authorities arrested a 17-year-old boy who was hiding underneath a 12-year-old girl's bed after he had been communicating with her online for so long.
2. Romeo-And-Juliet Laws' Connection With Internet Sex Crimes Pertaining To Minors
In October of 2024, the Georgia authorities arrested a 17-year-old boy they found hiding underneath the bed of a 12-year-old girl. They charged him with a number of weapon offenses, among other things, but the most Earthshattering charges brought against him were for Aggravated Child Molestation and Sodomy. A video about it can be found below.
Georgia Police Arrested A 17-Year-Old Boy Who Had Been Hiding Underneath A 12-Year-Old Girl's Bed
The video claims that this young boy groomed his 12-year-old girlfriend. Well, that would be something that the prosecution would have to prove at trial. Probably most teenage boys groom their adolescent girlfriends into having sex with them anyhow, if you can really consider "grooming" to be any more than a bogus conspiracy theory.
When I first viewed the title of this same video in the thumbnail there on YouTube, I thought that this was going to be another shocking story about a middle-aged man hooking up with a 12-year-old girl online and getting her pregnant, so to speak. However, it turned out that this video was merely about one underage adolescent having sexual relations with another underage adolescent and hiding in her bedroom from the girl's mother.
Is this young man a pedophile? Well, he is five years older than the girl. She could very well still be in Tanner Stage 1.
Nonetheless, even if the young girl were still in Tanner Stage 1, there is a provision in the Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ("DSM-5") that states that boys in their late teenage years (17 to 19 years of age) who are sexually attracted to 12- and 13-year-old girls are not pedophiles.
Will this 17-year-old boy be able to resort to Romeo-and-Juliet laws to defend himself against the charges of Aggravated Child Molestation and Sodomy? The way that the Romeo-and-Juliet laws work in Georgia is that the alleged victim has to be no younger than 14 years of age and the accused must be no older than 18 years of age, and there can be no more than a 4-year age difference. Therefore, this young man will not be getting any Romeo-and-Juliet protections at his criminal trial.
In any event, let's just say that the young girl had been 14 years of age. The 17-year-old boy still could have faced punitive action against him, because the Romeo-and-Juliet laws merely would have downgraded the sex charges against him from felonies to misdemeanors; but they wouldn't have necessarily made his criminal charges go away altogether.
In most state jurisdictions of our nation, the juvenile courts have been known to coddle teenage boys who get caught committing sexual offenses. However, Georgia is not one of those jurisdictions.
The police have charged this young man with crimes related to his being underage. At the same time, they have charged him with sexual offenses against a "child." There is a possibility that the prosecution could seek to try him as an adult. In that event, the criminal defense attorney could perhaps argue that the prosecution wants to have their cake and eat it too.
This young man is either a kid or an adult. Trying him as an adult for crimes related to him being underage himself would be as ludicrous as charging the 12-year-old girl as an adult for contempt of court merely for refusing to testify against him in a sex case where she is considered to be the victim because of her tender age, so to speak.
I'm not looking to defend this boy. However, I believe that everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law and that his rights should be protected every step of the way during the trial proceedings. However, if it turns out that he is a habitual deadbeat teenage father, then he will not be getting any pity parties from me in the event that he is made to feel the full wrath of the law.
At the same time, it bewilders me that an underage boy can be treated so harshly for having consensual relations with an adolescent girl of middle-school age, when a middle-school boy got off scot-free for violently raping a 12-year-old girl in the form of the late Aubreigh Wyatt in Oceanside, Mississippi. I mean, isn't Mississippi supposed to have a tougher criminal justice system than Georgia does?
A YouTuber who goes by the user name of "L TheBoogie Reacts" even kept bringing up the fact that this boy was only 17 years old and was still a minor every time the male narrator kept describing him as though he were the next Brian David Mitchell. Below is the video that YouTuber L TheBoogieReacts made about this news story.
YouTuber L TheBoogieReacts Provides His Observations To A 17-Year-Old Boy Hooking Up With A 12-Year-Old Girl On The Internet
Now, I completely get it. The 12-year-old girl's mother is a single parent working hard to sustain her and her daughter's quality of life as middle-class Americans.
For all we know, the 17-year-old boy could be from the ghetto; and if he is, the mother probably already suspects that he runs with a street gang and she wants him to have nothing to do with her daughter.
Would the 12-year-old girl have been so much better off if she had hooked up online with a boy the exact same age as her? Not necessarily so. Below is a video about a 12-year-old boy that was arrested for murder.
Police Interview A 12-Year-Old Boy For Murder And He Caves In
If the mother wants her 12-year-old daughter to stay out of trouble, perhaps she could try to stop her from dating at all. From what information I gather about her, she strikes me as a conservative parent who would only allow their 12-year-old daughter to date a boy no more than two years older than her.
At the same time, the 17-year-old boy could come from a gang-infested neighborhood where nobody even bats an eye whenever a 16-, 17-, or 18-year-old boy dates a middle-school girl as young as 11 or 12 years old. Whenever a 17-year-old boy wishes to date a 12- or 13-year-old girl and he knows that the parents are going to disapprove of the modest age difference between him and the girl, usually he'll try to fool the parents into believing that he is only 15, 14, or even 13 years old so that he can slip under their radar.
When I was living in Los Angeles, I once heard on the news that street gangs there had this one ritual in which gang members would beat up and even rape an 11-year-old boy or girl to jump them into the gang. It could explain why the term "gangbanger" is used so indiscriminately on the West Coast.
3. The Comments Section To The Daily Dose Of Crime Video
A YouTuber who goes by the user name of @EmbraceYourElegance posted in the comments section to the Daily Dose Of Crime video above:
This little girl was sending pictures of her body. Twerking. Has 2 Instagram accounts. Wearing crop tops. Lying about her age. SHE IS NOT INNOCENT. The mother poorly raised her child. Why is a 12 yr old wearing crop tops and twerking on Instagram ???????
All right, YouTuber @EmbraceYourElegance. Back in 2008, there was a situation in Florida in which a young girl named Alisha Dean had begun luring adult men into bed with her when she was 12 years old, and she did so by staring a MySpace account and presenting herself as a 19-year-old divorced woman. These men went to prison for statutory rape despite that they didn't know her true age. This all went on for a year. So, I hear you, YouTuber @EmbraceYourElegance.
Pubescent and adolescent hedonism is becoming more and more common now that the Internet and social media facilitates this sort of behavior among American juveniles. Infantilizing these teenagers and pre-teenagers only serves as a form of society's denial of the bigger picture.
A YouTuber who goes by the user name of @s.h.harvey1656 posted in the comments section to the Daily Dose Of Crime video above:
I have twin sons (25), if at the age of 17, either of them were conversing with a 12 year old. I would have not only been furious, but I would have immediately pulled him out of school, even if temporary. I would start homeschooling, within days he would be in intensive outpatient therapy & he would be supervised 100% of the time. I am so grateful that the law was never involved when I raised my sons & that they're incredibly successful.
YouTuber @s.h.harvey1656? I get it that you'd be concerned about the legal ramifications of your son being involved with a 12-year-old girl at 17 years old. However, I think that putting him in intensive outpatient therapy in that event would have been a little too extreme. If a 12-year-old girl is precocious in her bodily development, one can only expect that older boys are going to take notice of her. This may have been the case with the above-described 12-year-old girl.
A YouTuber who goes by the user name of 
Dudes obviously got problem but the daughter is equally a problem. I keep seeing this stuff recently a girl in my local area went missing she was posted on trafficked pages and missing exploited children pages come to find out her mother had caught her 3 separate times talking yo older men online. Her mother had a child lock security setup on her phone and could see what she was doing but the girl used a way around and had burner phone access. Girl ran away from home 3 times. The last time she made it several states away and everyone thought she was trafficked and happy she was home. When that was not even close to the case. Her mom caught her 3 times doing things she shouldn’t be with older people. And to top it the girl was gender confused and went by one name and referred to themselves as a they/him so half the missing persons reports said look for a boy and others said girl. Several people saw but thought it was a boy and they clearly just seen a girl so they never reported it till well after the fact.
YouTuber
A YouTuber who goes by the user name of 
According to the CDC, the age they start with for teen pregnancy is age 11. The statistics say, blk females from age 11-49 have at least one child
I'm 65, in my day if a 12 year had snuck a boy 17 into the house, the father, uncle would have whooped that 17 year olds ass.
The 12 year old would've got her butt whipped too.
Too many people listen to psychological BS about "a 12 years brain is not fully developed and they don't know any better."
Let a 12 year old commit a FELONY and plead that to the STATE.
"In NY STATE A NEW LAW MAKING THE MINIMUM AGE OF PROSECUTION TO 12 YEARS OLD."
The point I'm making is at the age of 12, that child KNOWS RIGHT FROM WRONG.
And if a 12 year old blk child commits are FELONY ALL THAT PSYCHOBABBLE ABOUT "UNDERDEVELOPED BRAINS," GOES OUT THE WINDOW.
So you CAN'T have it both ways.
I hear you, YouTuber
4. Final Thoughts
The name of the above suspect is Christopher Grant. If he were to have gotten caught having sexual intercourse with a 12-year-old girl anywhere else in the United States, he probably would be getting either a slap on the wrist or a complete acquittal. That is, if he had not committed all the other crimes for which he was arrested.
Usually under the Romeo-and-Juliet laws, an American state jurisdiction will allow no more than two years age difference between a 12- or 13-year-old girlfriend and her sex partner before the criminal laws kick in. For example, in the state of Washington, a 14-year-old boy can be charged with statutory rape if he has sexual relations with a 12-year-old girl but only if he is two years older than her. If he's even one day short of being two years older than his girlfriend, then he is not getting arrested.
New York would likely go easy on someone like Christopher Grant. However, Georgia is one of the toughest states in the Union when it comes to underage boys having sex with underage girls. Florida is equally punitive about it.
Nowadays it is so easy for a young man, especially a minor, to violate a sex law without even realizing it. While we cannot educate ourselves completely in the law, we can try our best to stay informed about events going on around us that have to do with sex laws.
The sad thing about the above-described event is that Mr. Grant is likely going to have a public defender at his court proceedings who is going to pressure him into pleading guilty. I do not call that criminal justice but rather a travesty of justice. Of course, I feel that way about someone having to face any types of criminal charges without being afforded adequate counsel if he cannot pay for it himself.
A number of middle-aged women like to see their underage daughters' older boyfriends get arrested for statutory rape, but they don't want their sons going to prison for it. Way too many American mothers want to have their cake and eat it too.
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