Draconian

Scotsman.com News - International - Children caught kissing face jail

GERMANY is poised to bring in a draconian law tomorrow that will effectively outlaw kissing and cuddling between children under 17 in public places.

While experts acknowledge that the bill has good intentions, they fear it will deprive teens of a sexual rite of passage, through flirting and experimentation.

Broadly speaking, the law is aimed at the 14-17 age group, but some subclauses have far-reaching consequences. Parents who put a picture of their naked youngster in a bath or a paddling pool on the internet, for example, will leave themselves open to charges of disseminating child pornography.

But it is the attempt to regulate - in essence - the raging hormones of teenagers that strike many as bizarre and unworkable. Under the law, to go before the Bundestag tomorrow, a teenage boy up to the age of 17 who is caught "fondling or stroking the chest" of someone younger will be liable to prosecution - regardless of consent.

If he does it in a cinema and the girl complains, he will be deemed to have been guilty of planning the "assault" by paying for the cinema ticket to commit the act - crime aforethought.

Critics say Germany has gone more than two steps beyond European Union and United Nations' guidelines in introducing the law, claiming that it is copied from the United States. A 15-year-old girl in Pittsburgh faces a long jail term on a charge of distributing child pornography after sending nude pictures of herself over the internet to a friend.

"This is not something Germany should be copying," said Jürgen Grünewald, a child welfare consultant. "It seems pompous, heavy-handed and totally unworkable."

Lawyers see a minefield ahead: false claims from girls who were rebuffed by the school hunk at a disco or boys spurned by the class vamp. But Brigitte Zypries, the justice minister, said the younger generation needed to be protected as much from itself as from the bogeymen that parents insist lurk at every teenage party.

At present, the law stipulates that sexual abuse among minors occurs when the perpetrator is 18 and the victim is at least two years younger. This age disparity is being done away with under the new legislation. Wolfgang Neskovic, of the Left Party, said: "In a ridiculous way, we are trying to regulate the hormones and lifestyle of teenagers and criminalise that which has gone on since time immemorial."

Under the new law a 15-year-old who posts a picture of herself in a bikini on the internet would be guilty of disseminating a pornographic photograph. She could be punished by law - as would anyone who downloaded it, for whatever purpose.

Professional artists and writers would face up to three months in jail if they make "realistic descriptions of sex among young people" in magazines, films, books, newspapers or on the internet.

Andreas Hill, a Hamburg sex therapist, warned that the bill - which appears likely to be passed by the coalition right-left government in Germany - might release a "wave of useless procedures for an already overstretched police force to deal with, while the really relevant crimes in society go unsolved".

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