Youthful Bride Revives Old Debate: Is It Love, or Is It Statutory Rape?

No one even realized that Wayne and Tina were a couple until things had gotten pretty serious. Her family was upset, of course, when she told them she was pregnant. But they had grown to like Wayne, and Wayne had promised to stick by Tina. So, with her parents’ blessings, they went to the county courthouse, her belly bulging at eight months, and vowed to spend the rest of their lives together.

In that way, the marriage of Wayne Compton and Tina Akers was like so many other hasty young courtships--kind of sweet, kind of sad, almost achingly predictable.

In this way, it is different: Wayne is 29. Tina is 13.

Because of their age disparity, the Comptons’ Aug. 24 nuptials in Annapolis created a mini-scandal within the courthouse and law enforcement community, eliciting characterizations of their relationship as child abuse, sexual perversion and corruption of a minor.

Their newly public relationship also unveiled a boggling contradiction between two Maryland laws.

On the one hand, there is no minimum legal age for marriage: Anyone younger than 16 with parental consent and proof of pregnancy can be legally married.

On the other hand, those same factors--girl younger than 16, pregnant--are enough to get a 29-year-old man charged with statutory rape.

Anne Arundel County, Md., officials say that although they were horrified by the situation, they had little choice but to allow the marriage to proceed because Tina’s parents did not object to it. But critics are calling for Wayne Compton to be investigated for sexual assault, for Tina’s parents to be investigated for child abuse and for state lawmakers to outlaw such unions.

“That child--and she is a child--followed that man to take the path she is taking,” said Gloria Goldfaden, an anti-child-abuse activist. “There cannot be, by law or ethics, consent on the part of such a young child.”

Law enforcement officials and the courts tend to take a similar view of such cases. Last year, an 18-year-old Wisconsin man who impregnated his 15-year-old girlfriend was convicted of sexual assault on a minor, even though the couple had pledged to marry.

The 1996 marriage of a pregnant 13-year-old to her 20-year-old boyfriend revealed a trend among Orange County, Calif., social workers to help underage girls marry or continue living with their adult partners, rather than report them as victims of rape or child abuse.

In response, Gov. Pete Wilson called for a review of the agency and announced an $8-million campaign to prosecute men in statutory rape and child abuse cases.

But the Comptons say that there is nothing sinister about their relationship and that their marriage was not an attempt to avoid punishment under the law.

“He’s nice, he’s lovable,” said the new bride, who gave birth to a boy a few weeks ago. “I just love him.”

“All I want is to be a family to them both,” said her groom, who said he loves her too.

That the Compton wedding generated so much outrage is a measure of how much societal attitudes about childhood, marriage and sex have shifted in just a few generations.

Today, many Americans, liberal and conservative, consider such relationships to be predatory, even pedophilic. In 1996, a 22-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico and a 14-year-old girl became the subjects of an international search when authorities in Houston learned she was pregnant with his baby. Police charged Pedro Sotelo with aggravated sexual assault for having sex with the underage girl, although a judge dismissed the charges after learning the two had married.

But through the 19th century, marriages between adult men and early-teenage girls were commonplace in some parts of the United States, especially in rural communities where adulthood began as soon as a child was old enough to work.

During the Depression, some girls married as early as 14 to escape their devastated family homes. Country music star Loretta Lynn married at 13 in the late 1940s, after eighth-grade graduation in Butcher Hollow, Ky. She was a grandmother at 29.

But attitudes had started changing earlier, when, by the turn of the century, industrialization and child labor laws had nudged young people off farms and into high schools. By 1990, only 3.7% of first-time brides were younger than 18, down from 13% in 1970.

Goldfaden, the executive director of People Against Child Abuse, a statewide advocacy group, argues that young marriages were wrong and unhealthy even a century ago, despite the different social forces of the time. “The sexual abuse of children was not understood. The rights of children were not being considered,” she said. “It was abuse then; it’s abuse now.”

Today, the opposition to teenage weddings and pregnancies is summed up by Richard R. Trunnell, the Republican candidate for Anne Arundel state’s attorney, who has blasted Democratic incumbent Frank R. Weathersbee for not pursuing charges against Wayne Compton.

“We’ve started the downward spiral of someone’s life,” Trunnell said. “There’s no way that a 13-year-old can know it’s time to quit school and have a child.”

Wayne and Tina Compton tell their own story sitting in front of her mother’s house in a dusty Annapolis suburb. A pickup truck and a fish tank sit in the front yard. Tina shows off the crude new homemade tattoo on her ankle--a heart with her son’s name, Austin.

She sits in Wayne’s lap for a while, sharing a cigarette with him, and starts her tale somewhat defensively. “I’m married,” she tells a visitor firmly, with a level and defiant stare. “It’s over and done with and no one can do anything about it.”

Though their families had known each other most of her life, Wayne had never paid much attention to Tina. Last year, he became bowling buddies with her 18-year-old brother when they worked a roofing job together. One night last fall, he stopped by Tina’s mother’s house, and the just-turned-13-year-old struck up a conversation.

“I said, ‘You want to go out?’ ” Tina recalls.

They conducted a quiet courtship under her family’s noses. On bowling nights, he would ask Tina’s brother, who knew about the flirtation, to ask whether she wanted to come along.

“We’d go out for a ride and talk and stuff,” she recalls. “Then we’d go back to the bowling alley.”

Two months after they started dating, Tina told Wayne she loved babies. And that she wanted one.

“Whatever she wants,” Wayne says sheepishly, “she pretty much got from me.”

In January, a home pregnancy test confirmed she would get her wish.

“Come on,” she ordered Wayne. “Let’s go see my dad. I’m telling him.”

Aubrey “Steve” Akers, 46, is the father of eight children with Tina’s mother, Nancy, whom he divorced this year. They got married when he was 26 and she was 16.

He said he was dismayed to hear that Tina was pregnant, but neither he nor Nancy prodded the couple to wed. Akers applauds Wayne for sticking by his daughter. “Most people would say, ‘Pregnant? Bye!’ ”

By most accounts, the sight of Wayne and Tina raised eyebrows when they went to get their marriage license. The court clerk’s office turned them away when they did not provide medical certification of Tina’s pregnancy. They returned a few days later with a doctor’s note. Meanwhile, courthouse officials conferred with state and county officials about the legality of the arrangement and were told they had no reason to stop the marriage.

Two days later, a local newspaper story about the wedding prompted Trunnell to attack Weathersbee.

He said Weathersbee’s office should have investigated Wayne Compton for rape. Under state law, adults who have sex with someone younger than 16 and at least four years younger than they are can be prosecuted for a statutory misdemeanor sex offense; younger than 14, it becomes statutory rape.

“I don’t care how in love two people say they are,” Trunnell said. “We do not condone this kind of behavior, a 29-year-old sleeping with a seventh-grader.”

But Weathersbee said that his office generally pursues a statutory rape case only when someone--typically the victim’s parents--complains.

“We haven’t made a decision not to do anything,” he said, but “there’s not much I think can happen unless the new bride wants to come testify.”

Tina’s parents say they see no point in putting their grandson’s father behind bars. They believe he loves Tina and intends to take care of her. “They got involved when she was too young,” Steve Akers said. “But they’re trying to do the right thing.”

Meanwhile, Wayne Compton has a hard time grappling with the fact that, in some eyes, he is a pedophile, a child exploiter. He shakes his head, speaks slowly.

“In one way, I don’t think it’s right” to have a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old, he said. “In another way, I do. . . . I just actually fell in love with her.”

Wayne said he will urge Tina to continue her education--she dropped out after seventh grade last spring. He will stay home and take care of the baby if it helps her move ahead. The unemployed roofer dropped out of school himself in the 11th grade.

“We plan on being together a long time,” he says. “When you vow till death do you part, that’s what I’m talking about.”