Kaitlyn Hunt, a now 19 your old lesbian teenager in Florida has been charged with criminal charges for having sex with her 14 year old girlfriend while she was 18. While Hunt is claiming that the relationship was consensual, Florida, like a number of other states, considers intercourse with an individual under 16 to be a felony. In Utah the age limit is 14, and then for individuals older than that the unlawful sex with a minor statute is based on the age difference between the parties. Hunt was originally offered a plea deal that would include no sex crimes but that deal has now been taken off the table since it is reported that Hunt has been contacting the alleged victim and sending her explicit messages online.
This story characterizes a common issue we have in Utah as well, we have had multiple cases at our firm of teens that don’t understand the law getting in trouble for relationships that they consider consensual and unoffensive. This is a very gray area of the law that most likely over-mixes the definitions of moral and criminal.
