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20 years

Lawmakers want to raise age of consent for sex to 18 years of age

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October 1st, 2014 (InsideCostaRica.com) Conservative lawmaker Fabricio Alvarado and a group of legislators have presented a bill that seeks to raise the age of consent for sexual activity and marriage to 18 years of age.

 

Laws currently on the books in Costa Rica effectively set the age of consent for sex between an adult and a minor at 15 years of age, with the exception of prostitution.

 

The bill would reform several sections of the Family Code as well as civil and criminal laws to raise the age of consent to 18.

 

In addition to raising the age of consent for sexual activity, the bill would also completely ban marriage between an adult and anyone under the age of 18.

 

The bill would provide prison sentences of up to four years for violators.

 

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  • disgusted

    Going to piss off a lot of Tico’s here. FYI I remember in Utah with parents consent their daughters could be married at 14 yrs of age! I think the law was changed as well. How many here actually get married anyway ??

  • MJ

    I hope the law passes.

  • SarongGoddess

    So let me get this straight – if ANYONE has sex before they’re 18, they could get arrested as well? Even if they had both were 16 or 17? Am I correct? PLEASE – Has Alvarado thought this out clearly??
    How old were YOU when YOU first had sex?? If it was over 18, chances are REALLY GOOD there is more to the story as OFTEN (not always) when people hold out (ESPECIALLY when they’re “holding out for marriage”) – they might have been sexually abused & don’t like sex &/or are gay – but chances are REALLY GOOD that once they are married, the person is STILL not going to get much!!!

    I definitely agree there should be some sort of law that protects 15 & younger people from being able to marry someone – especially when there’s a big age difference – but SOME people are pretty mature at 16 as they’ve already be forced into being VERY responsible from their family while growing up.

    • duke ster

      If you have lived in the poor neighborhoods, among the Ticos, you will see your 12 and 13 year old neighbor girls show up in the streets with a baby bump– crazy! One day you see a young girl daily and the next time you see her in the street she has a big belly with a baby in it. And more often than not it is a family member who has done the deed. That is why you see such similarity among the Ticos in a given neighborhood or town or area. Interbreeding– much like what has happened with David Jones I assume– He is most likely the product of interbreeding according to his statements

      • gunns

        If I’ 19 and my girlfriend is seventeen andI knock her up does this mean i’m a sex offender. Well sign me up but since I’m sixty three does a statute of limitations apply. Are my children now bastards. Raid the brothels check ID toss the brothel keepers in jail with the rest of the population who have daughters that these assholes prey on. Then look the other way. Sicnce sala iv has said all prisoners deserve a blanket it could double as a shroud. Another saving for the public purse.

        .

      • disgusted

        I too don’t get it. I live in a “middle class Tico are”. I have live here for nearly 20 yrs. I know many neighbors. Even went to a community meetings in the past. I don’t anymore just a waste of time. Clinic Cloroita Picado is full of 13 yrs old girls with babies. And their mothers. Children raising babies
        . My doctor told me they offer and encourage the 3 month injection to prevent Pregnancy. Very few will follow up and continue to be covered. She said often deny they are sexually active until they show up 3 months PG at the clinic some even in the last trimester. Many as well have herpes, or HPV to deal with. Every Christmas time I see a young girl inside the doorway talking to a young boy and by Easter they are swollen. Sad now poverty, opportunity what there is here poof gone! and so is the father. Other issue is incest, and older young men in their 20″s to 40′s looking at these young naive girls as their sexual conquest. Just the way it is here and the beat goes on!

  • Ken Morris

    If you think about, a bill like this only introduces consistency into an already bloated mass of laws that attempt to arbitrarily legislate things that can’t and shouldn’t be legislated. Since a 17-year-old single mother more or less voluntarily working in a brothel is currently considered a victim of child sex trafficking, it’s a bit of a embarrassment to realize that she was legally allowed her to get pregnant and possibly even marry at 15 or 16. Gotta bring consistency to the laws!

    Of course, laws that attempt to establish ages for things like sex are near nonsense. Were a rational and informed person to determine at what age on the average people are mature enough to make responsible decisions about sex and marriage, they would probably set an age much older than 18. Brain maturation isn’t complete until around age 25, and from what I have observed among some of my countrymen, emotional maturation sometimes still lags at 65. Who in their right mind would set the age at 18?

    More to the point, why would a legislature busy with other problems bother? CR’s law against child sexual abuse is already surprisingly sensible, since the penalties vary with the age of the victim, which is reasonably sensitive to real world behavior. (Sorry, most 19-year-old males having sex with their 17-year-old girlfriends are not sexually abusing them.) Anything much stricter, or more unnecessary laws along similar lines, only adds problems of enforcement to the arbitrary ages established by the laws.

    But I guess world standards now establish 18 as the magic age, and if CR wants to get in step with the rest of the progressive world, it better make the blanket age of consent for everything 18 too. It makes no difference that the age is arbitrary or that the legislation is backed by prudes on a certain to fail campaign to stamp out teen sex, the other legislators probably will have to get on board for the sake of consistency and progress.

    Then Ticos will continue living the way they want to, enlarging the gap between the laws and daily practice.

  • Karen Mata

    Can’t make this stuff up.

    How about the alleged black book from several years back that allegedly included many well known names from sport and pols of CR??

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