Last week in this column, I made the observation that Lolitas are all around us, from Bratz to Britney Spears, but I wondered where this new age of youthful sexuality was leading, and how the age of consent fits in.

I recently watched the 2007 film “Towelhead” (also known as “Nothing is Private”), which dealt with the theme head-on. I hate to use the phrase “sexual awakening” or “erotic journey,” but that was the focus of 13-year-old Jasira’s part in the movie. It was a film about her path through puberty, sometimes on roads less traveled and in one case down a dark alley.

Although cognitively and emotionally immature, Jasira was probably old enough to consent to sex with her same-age boyfriend. But there was also an older man, a next door neighbor and father for whom there are no excuses.

There is an obvious difference between an inexperienced boy and a calculating adult having sex with the same young girl. Yet our sex crimes laws often fail to make a distinction. Lecherous adults who prey on teens are typically given minimal sentences, as if the age difference doesn’t represent the corruption of innocence by a cunning adult, but some simple failure to regulate a “natural” attraction. On the no-less-troubling flip-side, as William Saletan observed in “Slate,”all too often “horny teenagers are being thrown in with pedophiles.”

The average age of puberty is falling. The average age of a girl’s first menstrual period fell to 12 years and four months at the turn of the millennium, from 15 years and three months in 1840. And most recent data suggests one in three American ninth graders has had intercourse, not counting the millions who have had oral sex.

Leslie Montgomery, an educator with Planned Parenthood of Indiana, said she believes young people heavily consume media these days without critical observation, accepting dangerous messages about sexual behavior.

“Sexual behavior is something that takes a lot of consideration. I think a lot of times, young people are not thinking ahead,” Montgomery said. “They’re making decisions about behaviors that can create outcomes that are really serious.”

And there’s the issue, whether we’re talking about teens having sex with people their own age, or people who are too old for them. It’s in the decision-making. Some 13-year-olds might be physically mature, but psychological maturity and especially emotional maturity bloom much later, which is why the age of consent is such a tricky concept, and also why I defer to Saletan for a summary:

“I’d lock up anyone who had sex with a 5-year-old. I’d come down hard on a 38-year-old who married a 15-year-old. And if I ran a college, I’d discipline professors for sleeping with freshmen. When you’re 35, ‘she’s legal’ isn’t good enough.

“What I wouldn’t do is slap a mandatory sentence on a 17-year-old, even if his nominal girlfriend were 12. I know the idea of sex at that age is hard to stomach. I wish our sexual, cognitive and emotional maturation converged in a magic moment we could call the age of consent. But they don’t.”

Global dissent … on the age of consent

Although the Austrian age of consent is 14, it is illegal to have sex with someone under the age 16 if you are “exploiting their lack of maturity.”

In Brazil, the cutoff is 17. But as long as the child is at least 14, authorities can choose not to prosecute if the partner doesn’t lodge a complaint.

In Queensland, Australia, the ages of consent for anal and vaginal intercourse are different (18 and 16 respectively).

In Finland, sex with someone under 16 isn’t abuse if “there is no great difference in the ages or the mental or physical maturity.”
Although prefecture law in Japan holds that the age of consent is 18, national law says sex is fine at 13.

In Germany, sex is legal starting at age 14, unless the other partner is over 18 and “exploiting a coercive situation.”

In Papua New Guinea, males and females have different ages of consent: 16 for females and 14 for males.

Oh, and despite foreign laws, it’s illegal for Americans to have sex abroad with someone under 16, unless the age difference is less than 4 years.

— Source: Interpol