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IAMI -- Prompted by studies
showing that most babies born to teen-age mothers are fathered by adults, some
states are dusting off seldom-used statutory rape laws and cracking down on the
older men.
While Congress has focused on proposals like denying teen-age mothers cash payments as part of an overhaul of the welfare system, state officials have begun looking at these older fathers as the unaddressed half of the teen-age pregnancy problem and its cost to taxpayers.
Increasingly, states are enforcing statutory rape laws that prohibit sex between adults and minors and even increasing penalties for a crime that has been ignored as society grew more permissive.
This year, Florida passed a tougher statutory rape law that specifies unacceptable age gaps and creates new reporting requirements, while legislators in Georgia approved a bill lengthening some minimum prison sentences for statutory rape, to 10 years from 1. In California, district attorneys have formed special units to enforce the old laws. Other states including Massachusetts and Delaware are considering tougher laws or stricter enforcement.
Driving the interest of legislators and prosecutors is a trend that has been lost in the national debate over teen-agers and their out-of-wedlock children: in two out of three births to teen-age mothers, studies indicate, the father is 20 years old or older, often much older than the mother.
The states say that they want to deter such relationships, particularly with the youngest teen-agers, and that the goal is less to imprison fathers than to make them financially responsible for their children. Some researchers, however, warn that prosecution should be only part of a broader strategy to deal with something that is a symptom of larger problems.
But the state efforts are also significant because as the focus shifts to the men, the perception of the young mothers is also changing gradually. At times regarded as irresponsible, promiscuous or as users of the welfare system, this teen-age population is now being viewed by many as prey and even victims of child abuse.
"There's been a demonizing of teen mothers because of welfare," said Howard Davidson, director of the American Bar Association's Center on Children and the Law. "It's important we look at these teen mothers not as welfare queens but as victims of sexual exploitation."
State legislators say they face more questions than answers as they debate what is exploitative and what is appropriate. If the older man pays child support, does it make the liaison all right? Are there cultural questions to be considered? An indication of how murky the issue can get is the variation among states in the age of consent -- from 18 in many states to 14 in Pennsylvania and Hawaii.
In Florida, where the State Legislature this month passed two bills that are awaiting the governor's signature to strengthen statutory rape provisions and define as reportable child abuse any relationship between a man 21 or older who gets a girl under 16 pregnant, some legislators said their goal was to scare older men away from young girls. Others envisioned imprisonment for the most predatory violators and a rise in public awareness that could lead to more reporting of the offenses.
In California, which has allocated $8.4 million to prosecute men who have sex with underage girls, district attorney's offices in counties like San Diego are aiming at cases in which there is a pregnancy and the mother is 15 or younger and the father over 21. Most of the men plead guilty, prosecutors there said, and they usually face prison or probation that mandates child support.
Officials say they want to send a message that the men face consequences for their actions.
"Men are going to have to learn that these girls are off-limits," said Patsy Ann Kurth, a Florida state senator. "Many times these girls are coming from difficult situations and they get an idea that this is a ticket to something better when in fact it makes their lives more difficult."
But up to now, advocates for the teen-agers say, many men have acted with impunity because many law-enforcement agencies are indifferent to the problem, or encounter difficulties in prosecuting the cases when the girls do not cooperate. The dangers to the girls, meanwhile, go beyond the obvious concerns about pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. Once a girl under 18 becomes an unwed mother, research shows, her fate seems cast. Many girls, already from low-income backgrounds, will drop out of school, start depending on on public assistance and remain in poverty long after their teen-age years.
The relationships between teen-age girls and older partners is the subject of research, so the magnitude of the problem is not completely known. It is still a question, for instance, how many older men are sexual partners of teen-age girls who do not have babies.
What is known, however, is highly disturbing to those who work with the teen-agers. A study last year by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that researches population issues, found that 65 percent of teen-age mothers age 15 to 19 had children by men who were 20 or older. In the case of girls who are 18 or 19, the age spread may be only a few years, experts on teen-age pregnancy said. But in the Guttmacher study, even half the teen-agers in the 15-to-17 age group had children by older men, 20 percent of them six years older or more.
This and other studies have found that the younger the mother the wider the age gap. And although such relationships may have always existed, experts worry about what they know today -- the number of unmarried teen-age mothers is rising and many teen-age mothers have experienced sexual abuse as a child. Some of the relationships with older men follow a coercive pattern that may have been less of an issue in past generations, some noted.
At two public schools for teen-age parents here in Dade County, young mothers, some of whom spoke on the condition that their last names not be used, described older men as more controlling and possessive than teen-age boys, but they unanimously described younger men as worse: self-centered and immature, more interested in their clothes than the children they fathered.
Most said their relationships had arisen from chance encounters at a nightclub, a store, a party or a park and that initially the men thought them much older, sometimes prodded by the girls' own lies.
"It's nobody's business who you are dating," said Madeleine M., who met her husband when she was 12 and he was 23. She was his niece's best friend.
"At the beginning I thought he was old but he treats me nice and he takes care of me," said the girl, who is now 14 and seven months pregnant.
Elizabeth I., 15, said the 23-year-old father of her unborn baby refuses to accept the child is his. Her mother considered the relationship "abuse" because of the eight-year age difference and welcomes tougher laws.
"He led her on as far as his feelings," said the mother, a telephone company employee.
The parents of another student, Maria Galeas, 16, once called the police when she stormed out of their Hialeah apartment after an argument and left with her 28-year-old boyfriend, now the father of her 3-month-old daughter. The officers said there was little they could do. Now, under the strengthened statutory rape law, they would treat as a felony any case in which a girl is 16 or 17 and the man 24 or older.
Maria has a 1-year-old son whose father is 17 and calls "every once in a while." Her older boyfriend, a college student, contributes money for diapers and clothes but is evasive about wedding plans, so she lives with her mother and three sisters.
"These relationships should be illegal if they don't offer anything to these girls. He says he can't because he is studying," said Digna Galeas, Maria's 42-year-old mother. "There was an opportunity to try to get him arrested when she got pregnant but she threatened to run away. My hands are tied."
Brian Lanier, the boyfriend, who works part-time in a supermarket and wants to go to law school next year, said his relationship with Maria "just happened" and that he did not see anything wrong with it.
"You can be a young, young person and know a lot," he said, adding that statutory rape laws are futile. "Statutory rape goes on every day in this society. It'd still be going on. It'd just be more secluded."
Legislators and school officials say they worry most about predatory men, the kind who seek out girls for safer sex, who get several of them pregnant or go around collecting their welfare checks. But some note that the men are likely themselves to suffer from the low self-esteem and lack of career opportunities afflicting many teen-age mothers and should also be worthy of counseling and social services.
"It really is an unfortunate collision of two people whose lives are very limited," said Kathleen Sylvester, vice president for domestic policy of the Progressive Policy Institute, which is affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Council.
Ms. Sylvester and Davidson of the American Bar Association have started the first comprehensive study on sexual activity between adult men and young girls.
Sitting in front of her family's duplex apartment, Maria Galeas said she wanted to marry her older boyfriend. Lanier, holding his baby daughter, was asked whether he would ever let her date a man 12 years her senior, like him.
Probably not, he said, then changed his mind. "Whatever makes her happy," he said.
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