Imprisonment for statutory rape convictions can be as high as 15 or 20 years
By Brendan LaChance . . . Statutory rape laws across the United States have changed over time but both Wyoming and Florida have had a minimum age of consent to sexual intercourse on the books since at least 1880, according to the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University and the University of Missouri–Kansas City.
Back in 1880, the age at which a person could legally consent to sexual intercourse in both Wyoming and Florida was 10 years old, but by 1920, the age of consent in Wyoming had been raised to 16 years old and in Florida to 18 years old, the Center for History and New Media shows.
The age of consent in Wyoming is currently 16 years old and remains 18 years old in Florida.
The Casper Star-Tribune broke a story on Friday, reporting that Wyoming Sen. Anthony Bouchard had told a reporter that when he was 18 years old he had impregnated a girl who was 14 years old.
Bouchard himself said in a Facebook video on Thursday evening that he got a girl pregnant when both were teenagers: “She was a little younger than me, so it was like a Romeo and Juliet story,” Bouchard said in the video.
Bouchard said that he released the video to get out ahead of the story, saying that a reporter from a United Kingdom media outlet, which he did not name, had attempted to interview him as part of an investigation into his past. Bouchard is running for Wyoming’s only seat in the U.S. House, as one of a number of candidates attempting to unseat Wyoming’s U.S. Rep. Lize Cheney.
He said that investigation into his past is an attempt at what he called “dirty politics.”
“They are willing to go back almost 40 years to something that happened in my youth,” Bouchard said in the video.
Read the rest of the piece here at Oil City News.
