Age of Consent
September 23, 2006 by MCA
You have probably seen the show Dateline, “Child Predators”, where they film child predators, which meet their potential victims on-line, and then meet them in person. Generally the girl they are meeting is portrayed as being 13-15 years-old but in actuality is 19-23 years-old.
On the show last night the shows “host” made an off the cuff remark in response to one of the predators concerns about being labeled a pedophile. He stated in Georgia he wouldn’t be a pedophile but could be convicted as a sexual offender.
The term pedophile is also sometimes colloquially used to denote significantly older adults who are sexually attracted to adolescents below the local age of consent.
The age of consent in Georgia is 16 years-old.
While the phrase age of consent (AoC) typically does not appear in legal statutes [1], when used with reference to criminal law the age of consent is the minimum age at which a person is considered to be capable of legally giving informed consent to any contract or behaviour regulated by law with another person. This article refers specifically to those laws regulating sexual acts. This should not be confused with the age of majority or age of criminal responsibility or the marriageable age.The age of consent varies widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction [1](pp.40-59). The median seems to range from fourteen to sixteen years, but laws stating ages as young as twelve and as old as twenty-one do exist. Some jurisdictions forbid sexual activity outside of legal marriage completely. The relevant age may also vary by the type of sexual act, the gender of the actors or other restrictions such as abuse of authority. Some jurisdictions may also make allowances for minors engaged in sexual acts with each other rather than a hard and fast single age. Charges resulting from a breach of these laws may range from a relatively low level misdemeanor such as “corruption of a minor” to “statutory rape” (which is considered equivalent to rape, both in severity and sentencing).
Some states also use a formula to define AoC by factoring the age of the child relative to the age of the predator.
Read Sections 16-6.1 through 16.5 for the applicable statutes for the age of consent in Georgia.
State Statutes
Age of Emancipation
Age of Majority
Age for Sexual Consent
