Over the past few decades, many national jurisdictions on the European continent have revised their age of consent legislation. A comparison of the age of consent laws of 59 jurisdictions in 2004 and 2016 revealed three important developments to have taken place during the past 12 years. The first trend – to raise the general age of consent and abolish very low ages of consent (<14 years) – signals that nowadays much greater emphasis is placed on the protection of children against negative and premature sexual experiences. This protectionist approach, however, comes at a cost: A higher statutory age of consent can restrain children in their sexual autonomy. The second trend emerging from the comparison was the full and complete equalization of the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual relations. While in 2004, one-third of the studied jurisdictions still had discriminatory provisions for homo- or heterosexual sex, all of them have now adopted laws that are neutral regarding the sexual orientation of the partners involved. The third trend is to create a higher age limit for sexual behaviours in relationships of authority or dependence. This acknowledgement of the need for increased protection of minors in relationships characterized by a power imbalance deserves following by jurisdictions that have not distinguished a different age of consent for authority relations (yet).
EU instruments regulating the rights of adult vulnerable victims and vulnerable suspects differ in their conceptualisation of ‘vulnerability’. The Victim Directive mainly focuses on persons who are vulnerable to secondary victimisation due to external factors, while vulnerability in the Recommendation on procedural safeguards for vulnerable persons suspected or accused in criminal proceedings hinges on endogenic factors, such as the suspect's mental or physical condition. The aim of the latter instrument is to remedy the suspect's inability to understand and to effectively participate in criminal proceedings. These different conceptualisations have resulted in different guarantees for vulnerable victims and vulnerable suspects. The Recommendation contains provisions that – once adopted in a victims' rights instrument – could considerably strengthen the current protection of vulnerable victims and vice versa. In order to provide for a more comprehensive protection the EU should embrace both perspectives in its dealings with vulnerable persons, regardless of whether they are victims or suspects.
Age of consent-the age at which young people are considered legally competent to consent to sexual activities-is an important weapon invented by law makers to protect young children from being sexually abused and exploited by predatory adults. In this study, a comparison of the age of consent legislation in 2004 and 2016 in Europe reveals that it is a trend for European law makers to adopt a gender-neutral approach in their age of consent legislation, i.e., the gender of the sexual participants does not affect the legal consequence of the sexual activity and both male and female children, either in heterosexual or homosexual relations, enjoy protection to the same extent. Then the age of consent legislation in China is deeply examined to see whether it is gender-neutral as most of the European jurisdictions. Based on the previous introduction and analysis of Europe and China, this paper concludes that the gender-neutral trend identified in Europe could be instructive for China's future age of consent legislation.
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