Commentary: With All The Reasons Teens Have for Abstaining from Sex, Possible Prison Shouldn’t Be Among Them
Date: Sunday, October 28, 2007
By: Deborah Mathis, BlackAmericaWeb.com
There are plenty of reasons to discourage teenagers from sexual activity – STDs, unwanted pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, the risk to emotional health.
The possibility of spending 10 years in prison should not be one of them.
Georgia has finally gotten that but only after one young man had paid an exceptionally heavy price for the lesson.
No one can argue that Genarlow Wilson did a stupid and low-down thing when he was 17 and had sex with a couple of girls who joined him and his buddies at a local motel for a New Year’s Eve party. A girl his age had intercourse with him on the bathroom floor. Then a 15-year-old offered oral sex. It does not strain reason to imagine that a 17-year-old boy, flush with testosterone, would accept.
When the adults have done their job best, our manchild has the presence of mind, the judgment and the morals to say “no” when approached so casually with such a consequential proposition. If we’ve done it good enough, they at least feel bad about what they’ve done and bad that they took advantage of a young girl who, for perhaps many reasons, was too pitiful to stop herself.
But, even kids with the best of home training, the highest records of achievement, exemplary deportment and responsible parents can give into temptations of the flesh and lose the struggle against biological urges. That’s the oldest news in the book.
They need persuasion and maybe home-style punishment.
But prison? In Georgia, the answer for Genarlow Wilson was an iron-clad “yes.” Because it was oral sex and not intercourse, Genarlow got hit with a felony charge -- aggravated child molestation -- and was sentenced to 10 years with no possibility of parole, despite the 15-year-old’s protestations, among many others. Intercourse with his schoolmate would have been a misdemeanor with a one-year max.
And thus was Genarlow Wilson -- outstanding student, son and big brother -- transformed from star high school football player, jersey number four to JustAnotherBrothaInLockup, inmate number 1187055.
Here’s the silver lining: Because of Wilson’s case and the outrage engendered by his ludicrously severe sentence, Georgia lawmakers have corrected this statutory injustice. If the motel scene unfolded today, rather than in 2003, Wilson would have faced, at worst, a misdemeanor charge. The law was not made retroactive, but the majority of the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that Wilson’s punishment was cruel and unusual and ordered him released.
In an Atlanta church on Sunday, Wilson celebrated his newfound freedom and talked about putting his life back together. College is next, he says.
This could all be called lessons most difficult, but there is a cloud still.
Some of the guys with Wilson that night have convictions on their records and are officially branded as sex offenders. Neither of the two main prosecutors in the cases see the rank injustice of it all. They worry, not about the unjust sentences or the potentially negative long-term effects on the young men’s psyches, reputations and futures, but that other inmates might want the same kind of break.
And that is the residual problem: Officers of the court who are supposed to want justice however it comes and whichever side it favors, but who see righting a wrong as getting a break rather than what getting we all deserve if nothing else -- fairness, if not in the beginning, then at least in the end.
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