If you get most of your information about sex crimes from watching international television, you might have been shocked to hear that a 26-year-old Christchurch man just had his rape conviction squashed on the basis of warm and friendly text messages from the 13-year-old girl he was originally convicted of raping.
Many of us would expect New Zealand to have a statutory rape law, meaning that consent could not be argued if the victim was under 16 years of age. But no such law exists here. The brutal reality of our current justice system is that the consequences for raping a child are much less than for raping an adult. While there are particular laws against sexual connection with a person under 16 or under 12, these carry much shorter sentences than a conviction for sexual violation such as rape. Click on image below for the full story Comments are closed.
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AuthorRuth Davy-Fundraising Manager, HELP Auckland Archives
February 2021
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4/11/2020