ok, I'll be the first to say it.
EEEEEWWW!

I'm probably the only person that will say but the girls knew what they were doing and I personally feel nothing wrong occurred here. Immoral perhaps, but legally there should be no issue. Sadly our legality is determined by 60 year old closet homosexual and teen repressive old men. And it would shatter their fragile little mind that a 14 y/o is more than capable of consenting to sex even to the point where they would sell themselves for it.

@darkened: I pretty much agree. While I wouldn't be one to sleep with a 14 year old, it isn't uncommon for girls/boys that age to be completely ready to consent. And it shouldn't come as a shock, because the rest of the world is ahead of us on that. I don't know why America is so damn sexually repressed.

@darkened: I'm sure they did know what they were doing in so far as they could at that age (ie: not a case of child abuse per se) but 14 is still way too young to make an argument for informed consent. There's no way someone that age in our culture can have a sufficiently developed perspective to allow for it. And it's illegal and creepy.

@darkened: you are sick. there are reasons that it is ILLEGAL (wrong!) for anyone under 16 (in most states) to consent to sex with an adult. yes, 14 year olds are more mature in this day and age than when our lawmakers were riding in wagons to work, but CHILDREN should not be engaging in sex for any reason, especially when they are manipulated into prostituting themselves to some pervs that are old enough to be their fathers.

Obviously neither of you are Parents. (yes, I'm going to play the "mommy card". Cause either you are a parnent or you are not.)

I'm on my second teenaged child, (one more on her way to those years! :}}) I can tell you that most 14 year olds don't have enough sense to understand that if you leave a paper cup of soda on a table, it will eat into the finnish, let alone, the long term reprucussions of their actions.

And let's face it, pregnancy and disease are serious reprucussions.

Their brains have not fully developed to make those decisions.

This has nothing to do with sexual repressions.

This is consumer news how?

Only someone who does not have children would say that, @darkened.

(yes I am going to play the "mommy card". Cause either you are a parent or you are not.)

Most 14 year olds don't understand that decisions can have real and serious reprecussions.

They dont' understand that if you leave a paper cup of soda on a table, it will eat through the finish.

Pregnancy and DISEASE...('cause do ya think this scum was practicing 'safe sex'???)

Yeah, this is not about sexual repression!

oops sorry for the double posting

@darkened: So 14 year olds can consent to sex and prostitution but it's perhaps immoral?

Um, what?

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Actually the rest of the world is behind us on this one. And its partly because kids are a lot less mature now than when we rode around in wagons.

We protect our kids now, we don't send them to work in the coal mines and marry them off at 13 anymore. They aren't expected to grow up and start a family before 18.

We extend our protections and we extend childhood, for all of the reasons Celticlady gave, in terms of dangers and ability to consider those dangers. And if anything, they are less able to maturely evaluate those dangers. (Which, I think, is on balance, a good thing!)

What these guys did, they did, as adults, with children. (And it's way f'ed up.)

I am shocked, SHOCKED I SAY, to find out that two people who were obsessed with sex were, well, obsessed with sex.

Flix Club was forced to close last year in the wake of a landmark federal court ruling that said several movie-editing businesses violated U.S. copyright laws...

Am I the only one who questions the use of "landmark" in that sentence?

The two 14-year-olds told police they decided to trade sex for money in order to move away from home...

Obviously the result of mature and logical thinking.
*facepalm*
*headdesk*

How is it that these guys had a storefront selling edited versions of copyrighted material, while many of us get busted for downloading a vhs-quality copy of Caddyshack?

@darkened: States set a legal age of consent for this reason. A line has to be drawn somewhere, and when it comes to legal purposes, that line needs to be clear and irrefutable. If you don't have a clear legal age of consent, what's to stop someone from having sex with a 13-year-old? a 10-year-old? You might be in favor of lowering the legal age of consent to 14, but how is that any less arbitrary than the current limits?

Without statutory rape laws, how would we prosecute pederasts? Would we wait for their victims to file a formal complaint? Should we give child molesters a blank check to have sex with all the kids they want until one of them rides their tricycle to the police station with some DNA samples?

You really can't trust anybody. Ever.

The more someone screams about being moral, the more likely they are to be total closet pervs in my experience.

@kittenfoo:

This is probably off topic, but it's related.

[www.wfsb.com]

I am not a parent but a teacher. I am saddened, shocked, and disturbed to read some of the comments here.

14 year-olds may be able to say the words "yes" and "no". However, they are not able to give legal consent any more than an 8 year-old child can give consent to get into someone's car in trade for a candy.

It's not repression; it's a realization that adults take advantage of the lack of foresight and understanding of consequences by children (yes, they are still children).

Dateline's "To Catch a Predator" is a great show. Take a look at the guys that show up and ask yourself: "Do I want my 14-year old engaged in ANY activity with these guys"

SICK!

Final point is this, out of the 50 states, why choose Utah to set up a porn operation?

@shan6:

Disclaimer: This is what happens when I leave my computer unlocked at work. I didn't make that post, and don't agree with what was said under my name.

That is one mistake I won't be making again.

WHY IS THIS ON THE CONSUMERIST????????????????????????????

I'm 25 now, but I still remember what I was like at age 14.

... yeah, I was way too dumb to be having sex. Capable of informed consent? I was barely capable of remembering my homework.

Anyway, whether you think it should be or not, boinking 14-year-olds is illegal, and this guy's a fucking sleaze.

@Steel_Pelican: I think it should not be based on some arbitary mag

@Steel_Pelican: I think it shouldn't be based on arbitrary magic number but based on situation and whether the adult used their status, position, etc as power of coercion over the younger party. Pretty much the same way sexual harassment is dealt with between 2 adults where a person in authority coerces the other into consent. Obviously a person that hasn't fully reached puberty can in no way consent due to the entire lack of physical make up for the act.

While the whole 14 year old sex bit is disturbing, I'm glad to hear these bozos were put out of business in their 'legit' trade. It's frankly almost as reprehensible, imho.

Kinda like putting jogging shorts on a nude statue or something.... just moronically puritanical to edit art to suit your comfort zone, and it completely misses the point in the process.

They made $20 per sexual encounter, and had decided to do it because they wanted to run away from home. Clearly, they had really though things through. These are the people you think manifested informed consent?

Then there is the 16 year old who was sleeping with one of the guys and has ended up in therapy over it, and possibly her home life.

If you read the whole story, you may see how ridiculous it sounds to even think a 14 year old, let alone these 14 year olds could manifest consent.

@darkened: Good luck with that. I think less middle schoolers will be sodomized by retirees when it's flat out illegal, rather than waiting until after the fact.

Would you rather have a world where 13-year-old girls have to go before a judge, and hear "sorry, sweetheart, I know that this man had rough sex with you and scarred your psyche for life, but the jury says you weren't coerced, and there's grass on the field, so he's allowed to play ball. Next case."

@shan6: I always wondered, if someone was charged with having sex with a minor, and said minor was to be charged with a crime as an adult...

14 year old can be considered to know right and wrong to the point that they can be charged as an adult, why could the same not be considered when it comes to sex?

@Celticlady:
As someone that was a 14 yo girl not too long I have to disagree. I have NO problem with the legal age of consent simply for the fact that it keeps men like this away from young girls. I do agree that they are opportunistic perverts. However to say that the girls had no idea what was going on or were manipulated into sex is just blind refusal to come to terms with reality. Parents refuse to look at their children as sexual beings (no offense to them, I'm sure I'll do the same) and as a result put off sex talks until they're 16 and 17 after they've learned everything they need to from their slutty counterparts. I recall not too long ago kids having consensual sex in my MIDDLE SCHOOL. And I went to Catholic school.

@darkened: btw, these guys might have some points you could use to strengthen your case.

@darkened: "I'm probably the only person that will say but the girls knew what they were doing and I personally feel nothing wrong occurred here. Immoral perhaps, but legally there should be no issue." Unfortunately for your opinion, legality isn't decided by why you think should and shouldn't be okay. On the books he did something illegal. He'll probably get a lighter sentence, either through plea bargain or as a result of the girls willingness to put the little show on - but you can't say there's no legal issue.

Just because you think early teenagers are mature enough to make such decisions doesn't make it so, especially not in the eyes of the law. Don't confuse your opinions with legal fact.

@Steel_Pelican: Many of the points they make are valid until it's brought to prepubescent

@Randal Milholland: I never said my beliefs were current views of legality, i hope in my life time age-ism is viewed in the same vein as race-ism, sexism and all other ism's that people abhor now but were culturally accepted for many years. Any person that agrees with age-ism then disagrees with racism and sexism is a hypocrit.

@Hanke:

It's one thing for a 14 year old to have sex with someone of the same age, and a far different thing to "consent" to sex with adults. In the latter case, the child can be too easily persuaded to have sex, so it cannot be a truly consentual decision on her part. I'm not so crazy about the former situation either.

Viewed one way: The constant exposure to sex and violence warped their little minds. Imagine the effect on kids. Clearly, we need to write computers that can erase nipples in movies.

Viewed another: People who are drawn to censorship are all closeted sex fiends, like Ted Haggerty.

Let's suggest that both views hint at the truth. Either way, this story is completely unsurprising.

Lastly, @Parents: if you think your 14 year old is not suitably mentally armed to make decisions, isn't that partly your fault for not equiping them for the real, creepy world that's out there. Sheltering from bacteria doesn't provide immunity. Real love is equiping your kids to function in the real world, not discover it all in college.

@Tinkishdelight: You said "I recall not too long ago kids having consensual sex in my MIDDLE SCHOOL. And I went to Catholic school," as if you think these things are unrelated.

Think again. Culture is like bacteria. Exposure confers some immunity. Shelter confers vulnerability. Think on that.

@darkened: So, a law saying someone in the throws of hormonal change and learning about adulthood isn't quite ready to consent and understand fully the consequences of sexual behavior is equal to firing employees who've turned 65? I really have trouble accepting that.

Are there the occasional teens who've matured a lot faster? Sure. But the law's the law and most kids aren't prepared emotionally, at least, for what they're getting in to.

You're doing your best to turn laws backed by many psychological studies on what's best for the development of children (and yes, at fourteen, they are still children) into some big social injustice that limits sexual freedom. It doesn't.

I will say there's something very wrong about two kids even offering this and child protective services should out their parents through the wringers. But get off your high horse about old white men turning an -ism into a restrictive law.

Oh, and it's spelled "hypocrite."

@Darkened: R U on NAMBLA's payroll?

@darkened: Statutory rape laws ≠ age-ism, and trying to draw a comparison with racism is nonsense.

First of all, neurologists will agree that the decision-making centers of the adolescent brain are not as developed as those of the mature brain. [www.sfn.org], [www.wpic.pitt.edu] . Therefore, most adolescents are physically incapable of informed consent.

Secondly, as anyone who has lived through that period will tell you, the difference in life experience and maturity between a 14-year-old and an 18-year-old is HUGE. Even with a fully-developed, adult brain, the accumulated life experience of most 14-year-olds is nowhere near anything that could constitute informed consent for sexual conduct.

TINKISHDELIGHT,
I'm not blind. I understand that children (emphasis here on the word children) in Middle school are having consensual sex. All that means is that they both consented. It does NOT mean they have ANY real understanding of the consequences.

Again this isn't about a 'sex bad' mentality. Hey I have 3 kids...obviously I think sex is a good thing. What I don't think is that children are ready to make informed decisions. BOYS or GIRLS.

BUT adults having sex with children, IS bad. No matter how you try to dress it up with the "but Mom, everyone is doing it arguement"
Because if you are still saying that, you don't get it, and I'm sorry to be this way, but until you are a parent, you won't. I'm not saying people without childen are bad or don't care about kids, it's just different.

I used to think it was hilarious that jews were going to hell for not believing in Jesus when I was a sophmore in high school. I'm sure I was a friggin' genius when I was 14.

14 year olds should not be having sex, consent given or not.

This thread is a prime example of overreactions to statements (some of which were never made) based solely on subject matter.

@PotKettleBlack: if you think your 14 year old is not suitably mentally armed to make decisions, isn't that partly your fault for not equiping them for the real, creepy world that's out there.

Not really. No matter how good a parent you are, there's some incredible amount of physical and emotional changes happening for teenagers. The desire for independence, sexual development and raging hormones combine to form a perfect storm of confusion and stupidity when it comes to sex.

I agree with you to an extent - shielding kids from sexuality can only backfire. But shit, don't blame parents for protecting their kids from their inevitably stupid actions.

@Steel_Pelican: Actually it does equal that, picking some arbitrary characteristic to define a person and then segregate and limit their rights is exactly that.

And while I'm not stating all adolescents are capable of making a correct informed decision, they should have full legal right to make an uninformed bad decision.

The hypocrisy comes in that adolescents can commit murder and be tried as adults, adolescents can be married and join the military (with parental consent) prior to the age of consent for some states.

The same hypocrisy that says none of these people have the capability to drink alcohol yet randomly on some magic date can drive a car, have sex, get married, join the military. With entirely abitrarily picked dates that have no relevance to the person specifically based on their competency in ANY MANNER.

Laws like this is what causes infantilism of our nation and is what encourages disruptive behavior from our nations younger parts. Treating a person like a child and taking away all responsibility from their actions will invariably make them act irresponsibly. Maybe if these laws didn't exists parents would care more to teach their children to make decisions with thought instead of hoping the public schools and laws protect their children.

And any person that thinks a 14 y/o with an adult is wrong situation unspecific, i hope you view the same for the 20 y/o and 40 y/o or 60 y/o or 80 y/o. Because in all likelihood one person's youth is being used by the other. But this is reality people use people, and people are more than happy to be used by people when they feel their own gain is justified.

I abhor laws like these because they punish a person for another person's decision. The proverbial it takes 2 to tango, to absolve one of their responsibility than condemn the other, is just outright absurd and disgusting.

@Celticlady:
How *I* try to dress it up with the everyone is doing it argument? Did you even read what I wrote?

To think that having a child is the best way to understand them is just silly. Plenty of people are shitty parents. Shooting out a baby doesn't give you some sort of super ability to understand your mini DNA. There are kids doing all sorts of things under their parents' roof and there are parents helplessly snooping attempting to get closer. Living under the same roof doesn't take away the 25+ years in age difference. I was posting my comment as someone with insight that is living amongst these people not as a feared authority figure but as a peer.

" I understand that children (emphasis here on the word children) in Middle school are having consensual sex. All that means is that they both consented. "

My whole argument was that 14yos ARE ABLE TO CONSENT. Feel free to reread, the comment is still there. You just agreed to that. I didn't say that they were able to fully understand the consequences; people in their 20s and 30s often don't even fully understand the consequences. My point has been made.

@darkened:

Just because a 14 year old child can physically perform a sex act that does NOT mean that they are knowledgeable enough to give informed consent.

WTF does this story have to do with ageism? Should a 14 year old steer a battleship through the Persian Gulf just because the kid is tall enough to see over the wheel?

@PotKettleBlack:
No I get that. Totally. That was sort of the point. I added the Catholic thing because of people adding the parent thing. No matter how well you think you're parenting. How firm and consistent you think you're being. It can and will still happen.

yes, I understand that there are lousy parents out there. Heck on any given day, my 14 year old will tell you I'm one of them. Being a parent doesn't make you understand children automatically, and I understand that your closeness in age to those kids will give you a POV, that I don't have.

It's just that those people who think those 14 year olds are old enough to consent and UNDERSTAND what they are really doing, should walk a mile in the "mom jeans" of a parent of a 14 year old. Those people would see this in a whole new light

@tk427: If they were intent on joining the navy, passed all the types of physical and mental exams required to make into the navy and were able to excel to be promoted to navigator or helmsmen w/e it would be, why shouldn't they be able?

And with the way video games are and the way technology is proceeding I wouldn't put it past a 14 y/o from being able to pilot an aircraft or ship.

@TinkishDelight: Indeed, that is my entire point. You can only do your best to teach your children to make decisions with thought and care and have faith in them, when they fail to understand and have faith they will learn from their mistakes.