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Advocacy Teenagers Being Forced to Live with Their Legal Parents I often say that teens are
forced to live with their legal parents. And
I talk about "teen prison".
I am afraid some people will think I am being
overly-dramatic, so I want to explain. S. Hein -- Related Article |
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I really do not understand how lawmakers treat the idea of "consent." For example, many things can legally be done to a teenager without their consent, such as forcing them to live with their legal parents or in mental hospitals. Yet if a "minor" teenager voluntarily has sex with someone above some arbitrary age which the laws call the "age of consent", they say the teen is too young to "consent".
It doesn't matter at all what the teen says or how the teen feels. The only thing that matters is the law. In Ocean's case she and I were not even having sex. We had never even met. Nor did we ever even have cyber sex. Yet at age 17, according to the laws the USA, she was too young to have a voice in the legal process which affected her so much, in fact the laws nearly cost Ocean her life. Though she was obviously the most central person to the case, she was never allowed to give any input whatsoever into the judges decision.
I also wonder if there can be any mistake that when a teenager is being tackled to the ground because she is resisting going back to her legal parents (or guardian's) house, that she is not going under her "consent." Ocean's father, by the way, tackled her one night when she was trying to get out of the house so she could call 911. He actually forced her to the ground. And evidently, this was perfectly legal although she was definitely not staying in his house under her own consent. She was staying there under physical force.
Now let's say that I am a 20 year old police officer. Let's say that one day I can tackle a 17 year old female who is screaming for me to let her go. Yet I can put her in handcuffs and forcibly take her back to a place she doesn't want to be. And this is perfectly legal. But let's say that on another day I meet a different 17 year old and we fall in love. Then we make love. And then her parents find out and protest. Now I can be put in jail because I did something without her "consent."
Something seems a bit inconsistent here.
One more thing about the age of consent. Ocean also told me there was a 16 year old girl in the mental hospital with her. This girls "mental problem" was that her parents told he she couldn't see her boyfriend till she was 18. This is perfectly legal for parents to do. They didn't care how she felt about it, which automatically takes them out of the running for best parents of the year and puts them into the competition for "worst parents of the year." Anyhow, so how did the girl feel? She felt suicidal.
She sat in her bathroom for hours with a gun trying to decide whether to kill herself. That is how she got in the mental hospital. My questions are "Why don't we lock up parents who steal love from other human beings known as their children? Why do we lock up people up for stealing cell phones but not for robbing someone of love? Why do we lock up the teenagers and not parents? Why don't we force the parents get "treatment"?
Or better yet, why don't we educate people on how to be parents so someday we don't have people who steal either cell phones or love, and so we don't need all the laws, mental hospitals and prisons?
...and so we don't need to go to anymore funerals of teens who have killed themselves?