How the charges could suddenly be dropped was immediately both shocking and outrageous to me. It just didn’t make sense. CNN covered the story further and included some comments from the prosecutor which simply flew in the face of reality. (Emphasis added)
Defense attorneys had said that the sexual encounter between the defendants and the 14-year-old girl was consensual.
“There were no scratches, no bruises. There was no hitting, there was no screaming, there was no running immediately to some sort of security officer,” Sanchez-Milian’s attorney Andrew Jezic said at the time.
Sanchez-Milian allegedly received sexually explicit images from the 17-year-old student also charged in the case.
Okay, so several of the key elements of the original allegations have clearly changed. Apparently the 14 year old girl wasn’t physically forced into the stall and was, perhaps, actively participating in the sexual encounters. Also, according to this new information, she filmed the abuse herself and sent the video to the two assailants who then passed it around further. But none of this changes one underlying fact which nobody involved in the investigation seems to be mentioning. It’s still rape, or at least it most certainly should be.
The age of consent in Maryland is 16 and at least until recently they didn’t have any form of “Romeo and Juliet law” which provides exceptions for children engaged in sexual activity who are close to the same age. Unfortunately it looks like they later included a provision which states that a fourteen year old can “give consent” if the other person is within four years of her age. In this case the girl is fourteen and the two individuals who assaulted her were 17 and 18. At least one, if not both, are legally adults. This is statutory rape in concept if not by definition in Maryland, even if some states are bending the rules. We’ve had an accepted premise in this country for some time now that the sex in a case like this could not have been consensual because a 14 year old child can not legally give meaningful consent.
These two men were not this young girl’s “boyfriends” and if existing law allows for something like this to happen and see them walk free, the wheels have come off the legal cart.