{"id":210,"date":"2006-10-19T12:43:02","date_gmt":"2006-10-19T16:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2006\/10\/19\/shes-arrested-for-rape-after-pro-se-sup"},"modified":"2006-10-19T12:49:17","modified_gmt":"2006-10-19T16:49:17","slug":"shes-arrested-for-rape-after-pro-se-support-petition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2006\/10\/19\/shes-arrested-for-rape-after-pro-se-support-petition\/","title":{"rendered":"she’s arrested for rape after pro se support petition"},"content":{"rendered":"
The story of Kimberly A. Baker, of Warrensburg, NY, leaves me with mixed feelings.\u00a0 Usually, I like individuals to be fully informed when they enter the justice system.\u00a0 This time, however, I can live with the fact that Ms. Baker might not have filed her petition for child support in Warren County’s Family Court, if she had been in possession of more information, in the form of a lawyer’s advice or a <\/font>Court Help<\/font><\/a> website with more detailed FAQs on <\/font>child support<\/font><\/a> and <\/font>paternity<\/font><\/a> issues.<\/font><\/div>\n

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You see, the respondent father in this child support case is 16<\/em> years old, and the child is two <\/em>years old.\u00a0 Ms. Baker is 22 years old.\u00a0 This raised the suspicions of Court staff, who\u00a0did the math and referred the matter to the criminal authorities.\u00a0 As reported in the\u00a0<\/font>Glens Falls Post Star<\/em>\u00a0 (“Child support request leads to rape arrest<\/a>,” Oct. 5, 2006)<\/font><\/div>\n
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“Baker’s arrest came about five weeks after she filed petitions in Warren County Family Court seeking child support for her 2-year-old daughter, Julianna.<\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\n
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“She identified the father as a 16-year-old boy whom she told the court she had sex with on two occasions in September 2003, when she was 19-1\/2, authorities said.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
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“The problem is the boy would have been 13-1\/2 at that point, well younger than the state’s age of legal consent of 17 for sexual relations. As part of the court proceedings, she gave a sworn affidavit admitting to having sex with the teen, officials said.”<\/font><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Baker is not<\/em> charged with forcible rape.\u00a0 The statutory rape charge carries a possible prison term of 7 years.\u00a0 (Note: a Post Star<\/em>\u00a0article<\/a>, dated October 18, 2006, states that the police investigation has led to a second rape charge involving a 14-year old boy in 2003).<\/p>\n

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\"handcuffs\"\u00a0Any feelings that I might normally have about better-informing pro se<\/em> litigants of their rights, are overridden by my feelings — after a decade representing children in Family Court — that society must do much more to reduce sexual contact between adults and minors.\u00a0 Usually, the issue concerns so-called\u00a0“mature” men and young teen girls who like the attention of older males.\u00a0 But, the prohibition should be enforced just as rigidly against adult women who prey on young boys — even though, as one interviewee noted on local television last night — “with boys this age, they’re usually lookin’ for something like this.”<\/font><\/div>\n
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In 1996, several articles appeared in the Schenectady Gazette<\/em> about men having sex with under-aged girls.\u00a0 In a lengthy Letter to the Editor, dated Feb. 21, 1996, I wrote:<\/font><\/div>\n
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“Clear evidence of such unlawful sexual conduct is readily available now in thousands of Department of Social Services and Family Court files. <\/font>I urge our legislators to construct a constitutionally valid mechanism for family courts and local social services agencies to report such cases to local district attorneys.” <\/font><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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What do you think? Should Kimberly Baker have been warned by the Court not to file this support petition or swear to her sexual activity with a 13-year-old boy?\u00a0 This is one case where I am pleased that court staff are not permitted to give legal advice.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font><\/div>\n

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The story of Kimberly A. Baker, of Warrensburg, NY, leaves me with mixed feelings.\u00a0 Usually, I like individuals to be fully informed when they enter the justice system.\u00a0 This time, however, I can live with the fact that Ms. Baker might not have filed her petition for child support in Warren County’s Family Court, if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[991,900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-items","category-viewpoint"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}