Destroying kids to save them (from sex)

In 2003, 17 year-old honor-student and homecoming king Genarlow Wilson was caught having consensual oral sex with his girlfriend, who had not yet turned 16. He was convicted of aggravated child molestation, sentenced to a minimum of ten years in a Georgia prison, and forced to register as a sex offender for life. If Wilson and his girlfriend had just had good old-fashioned intercourse, as opposed to oral sex, their "crime" would have been a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum of a year in prison and no sex offender status.

source: Article 'Destroying Kids to Save Them (From Sex)' by Christopher Ryan; www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-dawn/200909/destroying-kids-save-them-sex; Psychology Today; 22 September 2009