AGE OF CONSENT

I have a problem with an issue today. It involves the Victorian teacher who was fired because – under our new and mostly justifiable conduct laws – he had had a relationship with a teenaged girl.

He was twenty at the time. She was fifteen. It was consensual. And, according to his sister in The Age this week there was sexual intimacy but penetration did not occur. He reportedly kissed her and fondled her breasts.

I say I have a problem because, inadvertently, I was guilty of a similar crime. An adult having a sexual relationship with an underage girl. And I confessed and detailed it in my book, The Fall and Rise of Derryn Hinch.

I won’t name her. I met her at a party at Molly Meldrum’s house about three o’clock in the morning. I had seen her in lingerie ads in magazines like the Women’s Weekly. She was exotic. European. And I thought she was about 25. Obviously this was a long time ago.

We went out together days later. We ended up in bed. The next night we went to dinner again and, frankly, I thought her lack of knowledge – and struggling current affairs conversation -- was because English was obviously her second language.

At dinner, I mentioned actor Warren Beatty – and pronounced his name the way he does: Warren Batey. She looked bewildered. I then repeated it as “Beatey” and she still looked bewildered. Suddenly the penny dropped. She was too young to have heard of him.

I asked her, too late, how old she was. She may have been a professional model wearing lacy bras and knickers in the Women’s Weekly but she was only fifteen. And what we had done was illegal.

And I could have been arrested and could have been charged with unlawful carnal knowledge. And my career could have been ruined the way that the career of teacher Andrew Phillips has been destroyed.

Nobody could be more fierce about child molestation than me. I”ve been to jail over it. But methinks this time the Education Department may be wrong. And I don’t say that because of my own failings.

He was twenty. True. She was only fifteenBut they had a consensual sexual relationship. Should that make him a bad or distrusted teacher forever? I find it hard to say this but I don’t think so. I tend to agree with Shane Green in The Age today wo says the new teacher sex law is an ass.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2005