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The Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out a sex-abuse finding against a then-13-year-old Ogden girl who became pregnant by her 12-year-old boyfriend, ruling unanimously that treating her as both a victim and a perpetrator for the same act had created an "absurd result."
The girl, identified as Z.C. in court records, was found guilty of violating a state law that prohibits sex with someone under 14. She also was the victim in the case against her boyfriend, who was found guilty of the same violation by engaging in consensual sexual activity with her.
Writing for the court, Justice Jill Parrish said the Utah Legislature "clearly could have intended some degree of simultaneous culpability for both Z.C. and the 12-year-old boy under the fornication statute in order to discourage their admittedly reckless and age-inappropriate behavior."
However, she added, legislators could not have meant to punish both adolescents for child sex abuse. "The primary fail-safe against the absurd application of criminal law is the wise employment of prosecutorial discretion, a quality that is starkly absent in this case," Parrish wrote in a footnote.
Matthew Bates, an assistant state attorney general, said that neither adolescent was charged with a crime.
Rather, Weber County prosecutors filed delinquency petitions against the girl and boy as a tool to get services for them, he said. "The intent from the beginning was to help these kids," Bates said.
He also said the decision will have little impact outside this case, which is only the second of its kind in 15 years to go up on appeal.
Dee W. Smith, one of the girl's lawyers, said bringing such a serious accusation against the adolescents was "overkill." Prosecutors could have charged them with a misdemeanor to get them the services they needed, he said.
"It was impossible for them to be a victim and a perpetrator in the same offense."
The ruling overturns the finding of delinquency - the legal term in juvenile court for a conviction - against Z.C., who became pregnant in October 2003.
State authorities filed delinquency petitions in July 2004, alleging that the girl and boy each had committed sexual abuse of a child, a second-degree felony if committed by an adult.
Z.C. appealed the petition, saying her constitutional right to be treated equally under the law had been violated.
After the Utah Court of Appeals denied her appeal, she admitted the offense but preserved her right to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Her Ogden attorneys, Smith and Randall Richards, noted in the appeal that for juveniles who are 16 and 17, having sex with others in their own age group does not qualify as a crime. Juveniles who are 14 or 15 and have sex with peers can be charged with unlawful conduct with a minor but the law provides for mitigation when the age difference is less than four years, making the offense a misdemeanor.
For adolescents under 14, though, there are no exceptions or mitigation and they are never considered capable of consenting to sex.
The justices did not rule on this constitutional argument, but addressed only the legislative intent behind the law.
Parrish stressed that the opinion is confined to situations where no true victim or offender can be identified.
Sexual activity between a physically mature child under 14 with a younger or smaller child still fall under the child sex abuse statute, she wrote.
Based on Z.C.'s admission, a juvenile court judge ordered the girl to obey the reasonable requests of her parents, to write an essay on the effect of her actions on her child, to have no unsupervised contact with the father of her child and to provide a DNA sample.