Teenage pregnancy is a major public health and social issue in South Africa. More than 132 000 teenagers aged 10 to 19 had babies in the 2022/2023 financial year. Teen pregnancy has serious consequences for the mother and her child, and needs to be addressed. In South Africa, conversations around adolescent pregnancy are highly charged and often conflated with another serious issue – statutory rape. We sat down with Professor Rachel Jewkes, a founder member of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative and former director of the South Africa Medical Research Council’s Gender and Health Unit, to unpack statutory rape.
Ina Skosana: Please explain statutory rape in the context of teenage pregnancy
Dr Rachel Jewkes: Not all cases of teenage pregnancy are statutory rape. A lot of these pregnancies are the result of rape.
If you’re a 16-year-old boy and a girl who’s 14 refuses to have sex with you, and you penetrate her anyway, that’s not statutory rape.
That’s just rape.
It’s only statutory rape if she freely consented to have sex.
Ina Skosana: What does the law say about statutory rape?
Dr Rachel Jewkes: Statutory rape is a form of rape where, ostensibly, somebody has consented to the sexual act. But it is within an age category where consent can’t be given or can’t be recognised.
For example, under the Sexual Offences Act, a child younger than 12 can’t give consent to a sexual act. Any claim that a 12-year-old consented to a sexual act is invalidated. And so any sexual act of a younger child would be considered statutory rape, whatever the circumstances.
In the age group from 12 to 15 sex can be consented to, so long as the partners are both under the age of 16.
From 16 years and older, anyone can consent to sex.
Statutory rape applies to a situation where a sexual act occurs with somebody who’s aged 13, 14 or 15, where the other party is aged 16 or over. So it depends on the age of both parties but in different ways.
Ina Skosana: What does the phrase “sexual acts” include?
Dr Rachel Jewkes: The sexual offences legislation covers almost every sexual act that is non-consensual. But not all sexual offences are called rape, it might be called another type of sexual offence.
The law applies in the same way to sexual penetration; that is essentially penetration of the anus, vagina or mouth by either a genital organ or an object that has some appearance of being a genital organ, or a digit, so like a finger.
It also includes penetration of any of those body parts by an animal. So you can rape a person by forcing them to have sex with an animal. There’s also a category of compelled rape, which is forcing somebody to have sex with somebody else.
Masturbation also fits within the same offence category. It wouldn’t be considered rape, but it’s a different sexual offence.
Ina Skosana: Does the law take account of the natural development of adolescents?
Dr Rachel Jewkes: I think that it does, the law doesn’t criminalise adolescent sexual exploration.
It’s very common for dating adolescents to explore sexually, and it’s definitely not in their interest to have whatever they do criminalised.
Ina Skosana: What is the most effective way of dealing with teenage pregnancy?
Dr Rachel Jewkes: I don’t think most teenage pregnancy is due to statutory rape. The highest numbers of teenage pregnancy occur among people who are 18 and 19 years old.
In the conversation around teenage pregnancy, there’s a big focus on the younger ages. [ 3 497 births were among 10 to 14-year-olds] This focus is important because we have a huge problem with child abuse in this country.
But there’s also a sort of moral panic around adolescence and sexuality, which is framed in a completely inappropriate way. If people really care about teenage pregnancy, then we need to think about how we stop teenagers from getting pregnant.
The best way of doing that is to make contraception very widely available. It’s to make sure high-quality sex education, and information about pregnancy and sexuality is thoroughly provided – in an age-appropriate way – to children from the early teenage years. This will ensure that, as children move into the period of puberty and start thinking about dating, they do so with an informed starting point. – Health-e News
Source:
health-e.org.za
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