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T HE VA N C O U V E R C O U R I E R F R I D AY, N O V E M B E R 1 9 , 2 0 1 0
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Family counsellor notes consent ‘confusion’
Study spotlights sex between young teenagers and adults Megan Stewart
Staff writer
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A 2008 federal law that raised the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16 was intended to protect teens from exploitation and abuse, but sexologists, researchers and educators believe a better understanding of what it means to consent may be more effective protection. Vancouver sex therapist and family counsellor Dr. Pega Ren says the issue of sexual consent “is an area of great confusion.” “Consent needs to be explicit,” she said. “No response is not yes. Nor is it no. No response is no response.” For Ren, who writes a monthly column for Xtra magazine, education is essential because she says social behaviour cannot be legislated. The changes to the Criminal Code raised the age of consent by two years and includes a “close-in-age” exemption that allows sexual activity between adolescents aged 14 and 15 with peers five years older or less. For 12- and 13-year-olds, the range is lowered to peers within two years of age. Under the law, children under 12 cannot consent to sex. Alcohol also impairs a person’s ability to give consent. The law seeks to avoid criminalizing sexual activity and experimentation between teens but nonetheless increase the means of prosecuting older adults out to exploit or abuse adolescents. Although the age of consent is raised to include 14- and 15-year-old teens, Elizabeth Saewyc, a professor of nursing and adolescent medicine at the University of B.C., said children 13 and younger are more vulnerable to the risk of sexual abuse. “The law was already presumably protecting them,” she said. Saewyc is a co-author of a study released this week in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality that determined only two to three per cent of 14- and 15-year-olds had sex for the first time with an adult in contrast to 39 per cent
“CONSENT NEEDS TO BE EXPLICIT. NO RESPONSE IS NOT YES.” Dr. Pega Ren
of sexually active 12-yearolds whose first sexual partner was 20 or older. The data determined less than three per cent of all 12-year-olds, roughly 700 adolescents, in the province were having sex. The data is drawn from the 2008 B.C. Adolescent Health Survey, a population controlled survey of 29,000 youth in Grades 7 to 12 around the province. Unique in Canada, the survey is organized every five years by the McCreary Centre Society where Saewyc is the director of research. The study did find that older teens were more likely to report instances of forced sexual activity by another youth close in age. That abuse is reported is a positive indication, but Saewyc said the research suggests not all teens understand what constitutes a healthy and consensual relationship. “At least some of them are not necessarily understanding what does true consent mean in a sexual relationship—that pressure is not OK and that no does mean no.” Expanding on the meaning of consent, Kristen Gilbert, a sexual health educator with Options for Sexual Health, emphasizes that consent is active. “Consent doesn’t mean not saying ‘no,’ consent doesn’t mean not saying anything, it doesn’t mean not crying, not yelling,” she told a radio station in September at the time of a police investigation of the repeated rape of a 16-yearold Pitt Meadows high schooler. In the workshops Gilbert gives to teens around the Lower Mainland, she says consent is an unfamiliar topic, meaning rape is often misunderstood. “When I bring up consent, it’s almost always for the first time.” mstewart@vancourier.com