New Law Levies Sizable Fines for Intercourse With Minors

Gov. Pete Wilson signed a bill Monday allowing prosecutors to pursue sizable civil penalties against adults who engage in unlawful sexual intercourse with minors.

The measure comes even as local officials continued to grapple with a controversial practice of some Orange County social workers who have helped at least 15 underage girls--one only 13 years old--get released from protective custody to marry, or resume living with, adult men who impregnated them.

The marriages effectively thwarted any attempts to pursue charges of child abuse or statutory rape, because prosecutors say no jury would convict a married man for having had premarital sex with his wife.

The director of the Orange County Social Services Agency has said the pregnant teenagers presented social workers with a “terrible social dilemma,” because criminal prosecution of the men might lead to their incarceration and lessen the chances that the couples could create a functioning family unit.

Civil penalties created by the new measure give prosecutors a compromise between the two alternatives that created the dilemma for social workers.

The new law, written by Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles), sets up a scale of fines based on the difference in age between a minor and adult who have sex.

When the bill becomes law Jan. 1, fines will range from $2,000 for a case in which the minor is less than two years younger to $25,000 when an adult over 21 has sex with a minor under 16.

The latter example is the sort of case that has caused an uproar in Orange County. One such case involved a pregnant 13-year-old girl under the county’s protection who was allowed to marry her 20-year-old boyfriend.

The practice in Orange County has divided social workers, with some believing that marriage is preferable to placing the girl in a foster home and putting the man in jail. Others, however, believe the man should be punished for exploiting the young girl and the girl should be taken into protective custody, even if she is romantically attached to him.

Under the new law, money collected through the civil cases will go to the county for its costs of pursuing a case. The remainder will go into an Underage Pregnancy Prevention Fund to be used by the Legislature for efforts to prevent teenage pregnancy.

“This bill sends a strong message to adult men who think they can pursue and impregnate minors without any consequences,” Wilson said.

Among teenagers, roughly two out of every three who give birth are unmarried, and most fathers are much older than the mothers.

In Orange County, as many as 800 babies annually are born to underage, unwed girls in situations that point to statutory rape or sexual abuse of a child, yet few of the adult men who illegally father these children are prosecuted. California spends between $5 billion and $7 billion annually on Medi-Cal, welfare and food stamps for unwed teenage mothers and their children.

Facing an epidemic of teenage pregnancy, the state has spent more than $8 million in the past two years to strengthen enforcement of statutory rape laws.

“Teenage pregnancy involves sexual assault on minors and emotional manipulation of naive young girls,” Wilson said. “We must continue to hold adult men who prey on young girls accountable for their dangerous and unconscionable acts.”