it's most kind of them!!
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When `Yes' Means Jail

Police Helping Teens Understand Statutory Rape

February 28, 2004

By MATT BURGARD, Courant Staff Writer

Hartford police Sgt. Steven DiBella had a provocative question for students at a Weaver High School health class Friday.

"What if you go out to some party tonight, and some really hot-looking girl or guy just takes their clothes off and says, `I want you. Take me now!'" DiBella said as the classroom full of teenagers broke into shrieks of laughter. "Are you gonna think about how old they are?"

The students were quick to answer.

"No way! If she wants me that bad, I'm gonna give it to her!"

"Who cares how old she is? If she says it's OK, then let's go!"

"If she's taking her clothes off that fast, she has no respect and deserves what she gets, anyway."

DiBella, a veteran investigator of sex crimes involving children, nodded his head with a knowing smile. Then he dropped the kicker on them.

"Well, if you go ahead and have sex with that girl or that boy, and it turns out they're under 16 and at least two years younger than you, you could go to jail," he said. "Even if she says yes and you guys start dating and falling in love, it's still a crime. In fact, it's a felony, which means you could end up doing 10 years in jail."

For police agencies across the country, statutory rape has become a troublesome issue, DiBella said. DiBella said statutory rape cases make up about 25 percent of the caseload in the Hartford Police Department's youth services division, where he is a supervisor.

"Because so many kids these days are having sex, many of them don't even realize that what they're doing could be illegal," he said Friday before speaking at Weaver teacher Wayne Armillei's health class.

In the coming weeks, DiBella said, detectives and supervisors in the youth services division plan to talk to classes at the city's Bulkeley High School and Hartford Public High School, and the city's three middle schools.

DiBella said the most wrenching aspect of the state's statutory rape laws is that it leaves police no discretion if they find proof an underage teen has been having sex with someone at least two years older.

"I've had cases where the guy and the girl have had a baby together, and he's doing his best to support her, but now I have to arrest him," said DiBella, who was joined Friday by Sgt. James Bernier and Det. Christopher Arace. "What good is that going to do? Now the kid is going to have an even harder time finding a job. But I have no choice."

The way the state law is written, DiBella said, teenagers who are less than two years apart in age can legally have sex. If one of them is 16 and the other is 15, the sex is legal. Even young people who are both 15 can legally have sex, though if the age of one of the teens falls to 14 or 13, the older partner may be subject to other criminal charges such as risk of injury to a minor, DiBella said.

The most common type of statutory rape case, he said, is reported when a consensual relationship between an underage girl and an older boy ends in an ugly breakup.

"They could be going out for months, perfectly happy, having sex, and everyone knowing about it, even the parents," DiBella said. "But as soon as they break up, we start getting the phone calls from angry parents. And we have to investigate."

DiBella said the vast majority of statutory rape cases he has investigated involve older boys having consensual sexual relationships with underage girls.

In most cases, Arace said, young people arrested on statutory rape charges wind up serving a year and a half in jail, though in some cases the term can be much longer.

He cited a case in Georgia, recently profiled on one of Oprah Winfrey's television shows, in which an 18-year-old boy with a strong academic and athletic background was sentenced to 10 years in prison for having sex with a girl who was three months shy of her 16th birthday.

Instead of going on to play football at Vanderbilt University, where he had signed a letter of intent, the boy is now in prison, Arace told the students.

Some students questioned the wisdom of the state law, saying it caused more harm than good.

"It's crazy because they come out of jail and they can't find a job, so they have no hope for the future," said senior Patrice Mims, 19. "That's why you see so many of them going out on a corner to sell drugs. No one will give them a chance to get a job."

Nicole Bonner, 15, said girls and boys need to think about why they want to have relationships with someone who is much younger or much older.

"I think the boys like the younger girls because they don't give them any hassles about paying the bills or stuff like that," she said. "The older girls want them to be more responsible and the boys don't like that."

Jovan Liburd, a 16-year-old freshman, said he didn't think consensual sex between teens should be a crime, regardless of the age difference.

"If she says `yes' and he says `yes,' that should be it," he said. "Maybe the parents will be mad or whatever, but it shouldn't be a crime."
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