Garth Rattray | Child’s Month and the age of consent

As a physician who has been seeing families for over four decades, many things impact me emotionally. However, one of the most striking events was witnessing a woman in her nineties recall and relate an unpleasant experience that she had when she was a 16-year-old girl.

This woman was always determined, progressive, and successful in her own right. She qualified herself and worked very hard throughout her lifetime. She raised her single child alone and secured herself economically so that she was able to retire and live off the passive income that her investments provided.

She was known to be a good but tough individual; she never tolerated nonsense in any form. She was emotionally and physically very strong. Yet, when she told me how she engaged in sexual activities with a young [adult] man who was in his late twenties, and how that encounter resulted in pregnancy, she hunched over, buried her face in her hands and wept uncontrollably. 

Even at that stage in her long and successful life, even after proving herself by making excellent decisions as an adult, that single, poor decision made as a 16-year-old teen wounded her and haunted her ad infinitum. Watching that lady reduced to a bawling mass of regret was a stark, sordid, and sad testimony to the immaturity of the teenage mind and the possible deleterious consequences of decisions made during that fragile period of our lives.  

I never understood why the minimum age of consent, in Jamaica, was 14 years prior to December 13, 1988. Since that date, the minimum age of consent was raised to 16 years. The amendment to the Offences Against the Person Act, came about because of concerns over teen pregnancy. However, knowing that the teenage brain is still under major construction has always made the [current] minimum age of consent of 16 years incomprehensible to me. 

Surprisingly and inexplicably, the minimum age of 16 is fairly common across the globe. Other countries include Canada, South Africa, Spain, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Russia. In our jurisdiction, children less than 16 years of age cannot give consent to sexual intercourse. Therefore, sexual intercourse with someone under 16 years of age is a criminal offence.   

The law is skewed when it comes to boys of similar age. Whereas it is obvious that older (more mature) males deserve the full weight of the law for having sexual intercourse with an ‘underage’ girl, it is manifestly unfair to criminalise boys for engaging in sexual intercourse with underage girls when girls of the same age are usually more mature than the boys, and are just as guilty or complicit as the boys. In any event, underage boys and girls are [cognitively] immature. 

Influential groups like Jamaicans for Justice and the Office of the Children's Advocate are making efforts to have the law reflect understanding, fairness and to avoid having ‘minors’ (children below the age of 18) criminalised. The Child Diversion Act (2018) has relevance here since its mission is to “steer children (aged 12-17) who commit minor offenses away from the formal criminal justice system and imprisonment. It focuses on rehabilitation through National Child Diversion Programme committees in all parishes, utilising counselling, therapy, and community support rather than criminal records, overseen by the Ministry of Justice.”       

 I am therefore looking forward to the proposed changes to the Sexual Offences Act (by the Joint Select Committee of Parliament), to wit, “the exemption aimed to prevent adolescents (minors) from being criminalised for age-appropriate, consensual relationships”. This “close-in-age” exemption seeks to decriminalise sex between minors of similar age. 

The age of consent should be raised to 18 years because many changes take place in the brain between 16 and 18 years old. Doing so would also add another layer of protection for schoolgirls and reduce the pregnancy rate in that cohort. Currently, Opposition Spokesperson on Education, Damion Crawford, is leading the charge in that regard. This change has long been supported by Children's Advocate, Diahann Gordon-Harrison (of the Office of the Children’s Advocate). 

Because many teenagers appear proficient in matters hitherto confined to adults, exhibit precocious behaviour and are [obviously] extremely sexually aware (thanks to our modern / permissive society and to the widely and easily available ‘mature’ material all over the Internet), they are perceived as being fully mature, but this is a very serious misconception.

Many changes take place in the brains of teenagers between the ages of 16 and 18. This is why, in Jamaica, although the current age of consent is 16, the age of 18 is ‘the age of majority’. It was 21 prior to April 30, 1979. This legal threshold does not denote emotional or cognitive maturity. However, it is the age at which someone is no longer considered a ‘minor’… it is legal adulthood. This is when parental authority and responsibility ends, and the right to vote, enter into legal contracts, independently sue others, assume full liability, consent to medical treatment, and marry (without parental consent) begins. 

Our brains become fully developed in our mid-20s. Between 16 and 18 years of age there is improvement in the prefrontal cortex development – planning, impulse control, emotional regulation, cognition, increased capacity for abstract thought, faster decision making, better risk assessment, and more efficient neural connectivity.      

May is Child Month in Jamaica. This year’s theme is “Prioritise Our Children's Mental Health: Strong Minds, Safer Future”. Raising the minimum age of consent to 18 would align well with this year’s theme. 

Garth Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice, and author of ‘The Long and Short of Thick and Thin’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and garthrattray@gmail.com.