Helen Smith

Imagine that your 14-year-old daughter engaged in sex with the 20-year-old man down the street. Anger would hardly begin to describe your feelings, but then imagine how you and your daughter would feel if she became pregnant and the man who abused her got custody of the child and your daughter had to pay him child support for the next 18 years.

This would not only be unthinkable in our society but most people would say that it bordered on abuse or worse. Yet, as reported in a recent Arizona Republic news story, this is what happened to Nick Olivas, who happened to be 14 at the time he had sex with a 20-year-old woman. The difference, of course, is he's not a girl.

At the age of 21, Olivas found out he had a child and that he owed over $15,000 in back child support plus interest. He was rightfully upset, stating: "It was a shock. I was living my life and enjoying being young. To find out you have a 6-year-old? It's unexplainable. It freaked me out."

When a state government finds out a 14-year-old girl is a statutory rape victim of a 20-year-old man, the common reaction would be to file criminal charges to put the predator in jail. But for male victims, child support laws turn state governments into the allies of abusers instead of advocates for the victims.

Why the double standard when the victim is male?

The main reason is that the law says so. According to a 2011 article in the Georgia Law Review "much of the law relating to child support is based on the fact that it is typically in a child's best interest to receive financial support from mothers as well as fathers" even when there is "wrongful conduct by the mother."

Such laws date back to the 16th century, but today across the United States, state laws are driven by a series of incentives and penalties in federal law to enforce child support laws so strictly that there is little room for such nuances as rape. As a result, courts hold boys responsible for the consequences of being raped. In a case involving a 15-year-old California boy raped by a 34-year-old woman who gave birth in 1995, the courts declared, "Victims have rights. Here, the victim also has responsibilities."

In Kansas, the courts said the same thing about a 13-year-old boy raped by his 17-year-old babysitter. In Ohio, courts have ordered child support in a case involving a 15-year-old boy and a 19-year-old woman. Sexual abuse of men and boys by women is far from unheard of. In 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 5 million men and boys have been "forced to penetrate" and that 80% of the perpetrators were women.

Male victims of statutory rape are thought of as culpable for child support because, as males, they are not seen as victims, but always as perpetrators of sex, no matter how young. After all, they were asking for it and should have kept their pants zipped. Isn't this what we used to say about female victims of sexual abuse?

Helen Smith is a forensic psychologist and author ofMen on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream — and Why It Matters.

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