By Peter Polack

Peter Polack

There has been much discourse in Jamaica recently to decriminalize sex between children or defilement under the official name or offence. The foundation of that offence lay in the inability or mental incapacity of children, however spirited or bright, to consent to sexual relations, even among their peers. 

That inability or incapacity has not changed, despite the actions of many groups and a politician who has now sought parliamentary intervention.

Little distinction has been made in debates between female and male children. There has always been a prohibition of same sex relations in Jamaica.

That offence has existed in the United Kingdom since medieval times, with a brief period in the 1970’s, when an attempt was made to lower the age of consent by some groups. To limit responsibility in the proffered scenario is to take society down the slippery slope without any clear destination.

Many answers to this debate lie in the word defilement and the connotations of debasement, degradation and spoiling of female children, the most affected.

Any parent of a female child would have the greatest reluctance to sanction any sexual act of any kind with their minor children by anyone, of any age, at any time whether countenanced by groups or officialdom.

To embody children with the propensity to commit one crime, free of illegality, would of necessity lead to an increase in the age of criminal responsibility for other crimes. The UK has tenaciously hung on to the age of ten years while modern suggestion appears to be twelve, although it varies wildly in the Caribbean:

Antigua and Barbuda     8 years
Bahamas                        10 years
Barbados                        11 years
Belize                               9 years
Cayman Islands.            10 years
Dominica                         12 years
Grenada                            7 years
Guyana                            10 years
Haiti                                 13 years
Jamaica                            2 years
Saint Kitts and Nevis.    8 years
Saint Lucia                      12 years
Saint Vincent                    8 years
Trinidad                           7 years

Jamaica has seen twelve year olds charged with murder and the Cayman Islands had a twelve year old on a gun charge that carried a minimum seven year sentence. He was found not guilty.

The world is awash in a new barbarism and there is no need to joint the rush down the rabbit hole.

Like the book of Matthew says: Suffer Little Children.

Notes

https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20251228/decriminalising-sexual-activity-among-minors

Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer in the Cayman Islands for several decade. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88. His views are his own.