Sex and Section 261.5 : California’s statutory rape law applies only to female victims. For underage males, there is less legal protection.

A 40-year-old man invites a neighborhood girl into his house. He serves her alcohol and plays pornographic movies on the VCR. They have sex. He does the same thing with nine other teen-age girls over the course of a year before police find out.

Such a case would probably cause public outrage.

But last week’s arrest of a 40-year-old Granada Hills woman suspected of seducing at least 10 teen-age boys in the same manner has inspired an entirely different response.

Police are saying that some of the boys, ages 14 to 16, consider their experience “a badge of honor.” Local disc jockeys have even joked about the case.

“It’s the attitude society has,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Craig Richman said. “These boys are no longer virgins or inexperienced. People think they should be happy.”

And when Richman filed charges against the arrested woman, he was forced to do some legal maneuvering because the California Penal Code contains no law against a woman having intercourse with an underage male.

So Faye D. Abramowitz has instead been charged with three counts of lewd conduct with a child and five counts of oral copulation with a person under 18. She is scheduled to be arraigned May 15 in San Fernando Municipal Court.

Whether or not Abramowitz is convicted on the charges, the case raises questions about California’s statutory rape law, which applies only to female victims, and the continuing double standard when it comes to men, women and sex.

“It has to do with old notions. Society has traditionally put a prize on female virginity and on male experience,” said Susan Estrich, a USC law professor who specializes in gender issues. “Some people are probably surprised to hear that the district attorney brought any charges at all. But I would assume that a kid could get pretty messed up from an experience like this.”

Most states have statutory rape laws that protect both males and females. Some of those laws were originally written for females, and as public and judicial sensitivity to sex crimes increased, they were altered to be “gender-neutral.”

California Penal Code Section 261.5, titled “Unlawful Sexual Intercourse With Female Under Age 18,” dates to 1859. It was challenged as recently as 1981 by a 17-year-old Rohnert Park boy who was arrested for having intercourse with a 16-year-old girl. A Sonoma County judge and the California Supreme Court rejected his assertion that the law is discriminatory. The U.S. Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to uphold those rulings.

“Only women may become pregnant, and they suffer disproportionately the profound physical, emotional and psychological consequences of sexual activity,” Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote.

This sentiment--that underage females need protection from sex while their male counterparts don’t--is criticized by mental health experts. Yet it remains prevalent in American society. Films such as “Summer of ‘42” and “My Tutor” have even romanticized the notion of an older woman introducing a young male to sex.

“This is not romance or a relationship,” said Irene Goldenberg, a Los Angeles family psychologist, discussing cases in which an adult has had sex with more than one minor. “It’s an older person using their superior knowledge and experience to exploit a younger person.”

In the Granada Hills case, Abramowitz is accused of “befriending neighborhood boys,” inviting them to the house she rented with other tenants, then engaging in sex with them after giving them drinks and showing sex videos, said Los Angeles Police Detective Gary Lyon. The alleged victims have been classified as “willing” because no force was used. According to police, the alleged incidents between Abramowitz and the teen-agers probably would have continued if word hadn’t leaked to a parent.

“I really think the parents are more upset about it than the kids are,” Lyon said.

But it is common for young victims, whatever their gender, to have sex repeatedly with a perpetrator over a period of time.

“Sexual stimulation can be very exciting,” said Dr. Armando Morales, director of UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. “A boy or girl may not be able to control the sexual impulses that an experienced adult could trigger in them.”

Such victims are often reluctant to report the crime to parents or authorities.

“Sexual abuse victims feel ashamed and confused because in some ways they liked the incident and the perpetrator,” Morales said.

And being male does not make a teen-ager immune to the trauma of such an experience, mental health experts said. Victims of statutory rape can suffer from depression and withdrawal and have difficulties with intimacy later in life.

“It’s a fairly sordid way to get into sexual relationships,” Goldenberg said. “Something like this could turn you off of sex.”

Richman said he wasn’t surprised to hear that the morning deejays on KROQ-FM were joking about his case the other day. The prosecutor spoke bluntly in an effort to put the matter in perspective.

“If you’re a 30-year-old man and a 6-year-old girl takes off all her clothes, lies spread-eagle on your bed and says, ‘Take me,’ she is a victim because society says this person is not mature enough to make a knowing decision,” Richman said. “This case is no different. Even if these boys wanted it, it doesn’t matter.”

With sex crimes, the sentences for each count are added consecutively. The lewd act and oral copulation charges that Richman filed carry maximum sentences of three years each. If he could have filed additional statutory rape charges, the maximum possible sentence would have been longer.

Legal scholars suggest it may be some time before California’s statutory rape law treats male and female victims equally.

“Unless there’s pressure put on legislators, there won’t be any changes,” Estrich said.

The most effective pressure comes from the survivors of such crimes, said Sheila Kuehl, a managing director at the California Women’s Law Center in Los Angeles.

“There’s a cultural myth that you cannot do anything wrong to a boy if it involves sex,” Kuehl said. “Somewhere, somehow, a group of people who have had this experience need to articulate, to talk about the damage. If we have something to say to the legislators that would counter the mythology, that’s what it would take to change it.”

But if society continues to downplay the statutory rape of boys and continues what Goldenberg calls “an awful lot of smirking” in such cases, the victims aren’t likely to complain in public.

“They are not even given the choice of feeling bad,” Kuehl said.