It’s Still Illegal To Have Sex With Minors, Right?

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Written By:
Rob Port

Aug 20, 2012
3:05pm

I ask that question because a couple of recent cases have me wondering, and it turns out that sometimes it apparently isn’t illegal even for people who are decades older than their underage sexual partners.

Here in North Dakota Michael Delmore, husband of Democrat state legislator Lois Delmore, was arrested for soliciting the services of a prostitute who turned out to be 17. Mr. Delmore is facing misdemeanor charges for that, but faces no charges for the girl being underage because, I’m told, officials believe he didn’t know her age.

That’s a little hard to believe given that a) Mr. Delmore was a high school council at Larimore High School (a very small school in a very small town) and b) the young girl in question was from Larimore. I’m guessing Delmore probably knew her, but maybe prosecutors don’t feel they can make the case.

Anyway, now in Minnesota Kerry Gauthier, who is a Democrat who represents the Duluth area, was caught having oral sex with a 17-year-old male at a rest area. As of the time of this writing, he’s not facing any charges at all despite apparently having been caught at the rest by a state trooper who merely reported the incident to local law enforcement.

So here we have two politically-connected figures caught having sex with minors who are facing no charges for the underage sex. But that might be because of the way the laws are in the states.

In North Dakota it is a Class B Felony for anyone over the age of 22 to have sex with, or solicit sex from, someone they believe to be between the ages of 15 – 17 (below 15 is a different, more serious crime). This puts the burden on the prosecution to prove that the defendant knew he/she was having sex with someone underage, which as I already mentioned, may be why Delmore isn’t facing more serious charges.

In Minnesota, the age of consent is 16, meaning that while the kid involved in the incident can’t yet vote or drink a beer, he can get a legislator off at a public rest area.

Pretty strange, if you ask me.