ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 3, 1996 TAG: 9612030101
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
SOURCE: San Francisco Examiner
IF HE WAS A VICTIM then, can California justify holding him responsible now? That is the question - at least, it's one of the questions - in a first-of-a-kind court case.
He was a ``normal 15-year-old kid,'' with all the usual teen-age sexual passions.
She was his neighbor - a 34-year-old mom, later convicted of statutory rape for engaging him in a romantic tryst that resulted in her pregnancy.
In a case that brings new nuance to the term ``deadbeat dad,'' a California appeals court has ruled that the young man, identified only as ``Nathaniel J.'' in court records, is responsible for paying child support for the baby.
The ruling by the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles opens a Pandora's box of sticky societal questions, ranging from whether girls and boys should be treated differently in cases of statutory rape to the fairness of increasingly aggressive child-support pursuits.
Mary Ann Mason, a University of California social welfare professor who specializes in societal legal issues, said, ``It seems unfair that he was taken advantage of, and then he gets prosecuted for child support. He's considered a victim on one hand and a perpetrator on the other.''
County and state authorities, not the mother, have pursued the case, seeking compensation for welfare payments the infant girl has been receiving since her birth in January 1995.
The state attorney general's office argues the teen should be responsible for the child because he indicated he was a willing sexual partner.
``Our point of view is that the newborn is the victim in these matters,'' said Carol Ann White, a lawyer who heads the attorney general's child support enforcement unit. ``No matter what the circumstances of their conception, babies deserve to have two parents.''
``And this was a consensual relationship,'' she added.
The youth, now 18, won't be required to pay until he has some kind of income, said Deputy Attorney General Mary Roth, who handled the case. ``Say he makes $800 a month working at Burger King. He'll probably be expected to pay $200 a month to reimburse Aid to Families with Dependent Children.''
Under state law, the boy's parents are not responsible for child support for their granddaughter.
The case began in 1994, with a two-week affair between the boy and the unmarried woman, listed in court records as Ricci Jones.
According to court records, he and Jones discussed having sex and made a clear decision to do it. They had intercourse approximately five times, in what the boy later told police was ``a mutually agreeable act.''
Neither Jones nor the teen-ager could be reached for comment. The case did not become a court matter until after the pair's daughter was born on Jan. 20, 1995, and Jones began receiving welfare.
Under federal guidelines, counties must try to identify the father of any child on welfare and collect child support to offset the welfare payments.
That's exactly what San Luis Obispo County did.
As soon as county officials realized the baby's father was a minor, they filed statutory rape charges against Jones, which resulted in a conviction but no jail time. Almost simultaneously, they sought to have the young father registered as being responsible for child support.
``Nathaniel J.'' and his parents appealed, arguing that a victim of sexual exploitation by an adult should not be penalized for the consequences of the exploitation. The appeals court disagreed.
``Victims have rights. Here, the victim also has responsibilities,'' said the opinion, written by Judge Arthur Gilbert. He cited cases from other states in which minors were deemed responsible for child support if they had consented to sex with an adult.
Clearly, said Roth, of the attorney general's office, if a teen-age boy got a teen-age girl pregnant, no one would question the state for holding him responsible.
When he had sex with the woman, ``I guess he thought he was a man then,'' she said. ``Now, he prefers to be considered a child.''
Fred Hayward, founder of the Sacramento-based group Men's Rights Inc., said the court was setting a horrible double standard.
``This is victimizing the victim,'' he said. ``The law is based on the premise that a 15-year-old is too young to give his consent to anything. Yet he gets a 34-year-old woman pregnant, and suddenly he's old enough to be responsible.''
LENGTH: Medium: 83 linesby CNB