Sixteen

Go back to the halcyon days of Rock 'n' Roll in the 1950s and the early 1960s. Dig out the many songs which seem fixated upon 16-year-old girls. The Crests "Sixteen Candles" (still even now a favourite song of mine - for the vocalisation at least), Chuck Berry "Sweet Little Sixteen", Johnny Burnette "You're Sixteen" - there are dozens more. Sexual implication (naughty), but nothing too direct. What was it with Rock and girls of that age?

No answer.  Move on.

Between 1973 and 1979 I used to teach a lot of 16-year-olds. Mainly the intelligent ones. Neither children (I also used to teach 11-year-olds, they definitely were children), definitely not adults (walk into the staff room and check out my female colleagues - they definitely were adults). Difficult age to define really. Nothing to risk getting involved with.

Move on again.

According to stats in the UK approximately one third of kids of that age now are sexually active, in Germany it is about a quarter. Whether the stats can be trusted is a good question, but 16 is the age of consent, so in theory nothing illegal is going on, even if common-sense should encourage them to wait a bit. (I noted a few weeks ago that there are European countries where the age of consent is lower than that - see Austria and the Czech Republic for example - but there are strings attached to prevent predators taking advantage).

OK combine 1979 (see above), 16-year-old girls (see above), sexual activity (see above), age of consent (see above) and try what was happening in Denmark in 1979.

Copenhagen was at that time (times change) one of the centres of the production of pornographic movies in Europe. The age of consent being 16 (I am told), a girl could appear in such a movie when she reached that age apparently (any readers in Denmark please correct me on that if I am wrong but this was stated by one of the leading makers of such movies who had no scruples about using such girls).

1979, a 16-year-old girl makes an adult movie, a couple of years later it is almost forgotten, the world moves on.

You would imagine.

The number of adult movies being made around the world and intended to satisfy the seemingly endless demand on the Internet dwarfs the number made in the 1970s. So would anyone want these antique pieces of short not exactly classic movies. Times have moved on, the minimum age is theoretically 18 (cough, splutter) but apart from that what would be the attraction? There are certain things from 1979 we could do with now (the standard of living, the relatively low unemployment rate, enforced discipline in some schools at least - even if the one I taught in failed in that respect), but tacky bits of porn?

Well the Internet is with us and apparently .....

I was reading last night how the American authorities got themselves into a confused state in 2007 (does that surprise me????). They were trying to stop the publication (not sure whether it was a DVD or on the Internet) of a few of these ancient Danish porn films based upon the fact that the girls were underage ("Child Porn" etc).

I personally wouldn't regard films involving 16-year-olds as being "Child Porn". It probably ought to be called "Adolescent Porn" or summat. "Child Porn" sounds like one of these horror stories involving 5-year-olds.

The rules these days say "18" so that ought to be enforced (protecting the individuals younger than that from being exploited maybe - though if the girl were 17 years and 364 days old is a day gonna make much difference?). But ancient stuff from 1979 in a country where such films could be made legally?

It is not as if you are trying to protect anyone from anything really. Go off to Denmark and ask the people involved (if they are still there and still alive). Problem being they would be well into their 40s now. So do they need protecting from their pasts? Maybe they would be so embarrassed they would like them withdrawn. And then it may bring back fond memories. And then it may be so long ago they do not care one way or the other.

There is a need out there to protect kids from predators. That involves us looking at the situation now and finding how we can effectively do it (see the child brothels in Cambodia for example), not wrapping ourselves in concern about some tacky 33-year-old movies. That is a world away, any damage has long since been done, and public money could be spent far more usefully pursuing existing problems.