Old Law Aimed At Teenage Sex Varie’s Campaign Has Reignited The Debate Over Laws Dictating Morals

Amanda Smisek is waiting tables, caring for her newborn son. At 17, she is at the center of a legal and moral tempest over her prosecution for violating a 75-year-old fornication law.

“When I was first served with the papers, I didn’t even know what fornication was. I had to look it up,” she said. “It’s any unmarried person who has sex, and they got me on that.”

Gem County Prosecutor Douglas Varie acknowledges he is on a campaign to end teen pregnancy, and his weapon of choice is an all-but-forgotten 1921 state statute.

“Children who are born to teenage mothers are immediately at a greater risk to be involved in delinquent behavior, substance abuse and truancy, than children who have the benefit of both parents to support and raise them,” Varie said.

Since Smisek’s day in court on May 15, another half-dozen of Emmett’s young people have been charged - several of them men over 18 - with statutory rape, which carries a maximum life prison sentence.

“I admire (Varie’s) fortitude in enforcing a law that is not too often enforced,” said Bill Douglas, Kootenai County prosecutor. In his eight years as prosecutor, Douglas has never prosecuted nor been presented with such a case to prosecute.

But, “If that happened, it would not be high priority with us,” he said. “We’re taxed to the limit on other types of crimes. We would certainly have to prioritize it behind the drug pushers, child molesters and murderers.”

The president of the state Prosecuting Attorneys Association, John Swayne of rural Clearwater County, is straddling the fence.

“Every prosecutor has plenty of ponderables to deal with in such a situation,” he said.

But Varie’s campaign has reignited the debate over the value of laws dictating morals.

His supporters see it as another beachhead in a fight to restore family values to their former high place in American society.

Dennis Mansfield, founder of the Idaho Family Forum, believes Varie is finally injecting a sense of restraint into a culture where young people seem to be taught only how to make babies, with little thought for the consequences.

“Ultimately, what we see in Emmett is going to be seen across the country,” Mansfield predicted.

The prosecutor’s critics decry his crusade as nothing more than an attempt to resurrect the scarlet letter in the 1990s, and to inflict needless trauma on teens already saddled with the overwhelming responsibility of parenthood.

“The problem in this case is that everybody who slips up gets a record,” said Los Angeles psychologist Robert Butterworth, an expert on adolescent problems. “As if it wasn’t tough enough, this is another strike.”

The impact is magnified in small towns like Emmett, a farming and one-time mill town of 4,600.

“People in small towns have long memories,” Butterworth said. “This person might have to leave.”

Smisek’s sentencing came just two weeks before her son, Tyler, was born. She received a 30-day suspended jail sentence, three years probation and a directive to complete parenting classes.

Magistrate Gordon Petrie also took the opportunity to lecture her for two hours about the financial burden unwed mothers, particularly young ones, place on society.

Varie maintains that economics is not driving his crusade, but it is a theme he talks about.

“It is not difficult to see that poverty is a huge financial problem in Idaho,” the prosecutor said. “Girls who get pregnant in their teens are at a much higher risk of dropping out of school, which just starts the poverty cycle all over again.”

Still, Emmett School Superintendent Arthur Vaughn questioned Varie’s campaign. Unwed mothers are not new in high schools - in fact, Gem County has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state. Vaughn simply believes society should be helping those teens fulfill their potential, not wasting its time castigating them.

“What’s happening is an effort to emphasize the parenting program for kids at risk,” Vaughn said. “We try to teach parenting skills. Some don’t have them.”

Smisek has finished the parenting classes and is committed to completing her final year at Emmett’s alternative high school. She and her baby still live with her mother, Jody Smisek, who is divorced and works nights as a certified nurse’s assistant at Walter Knox Memorial Hospital.

“When I heard about it, I couldn’t believe it,” Jody Smisek said. “I thought they were butting into our lives where they shouldn’t be. I’d like to get the law off the books so they can’t use it anymore. Some lawyers want to help me do that.”

She doesn’t agree with Butterworth that her daughter will be ostracized. “Everybody here is really for her,” she said.

Tyler’s father, Chris Lay, 16, remains Amanda’s boyfriend and they intend to marry after they finish high school. Lay received a similar sentence after pleading guilty to fornication.

Varie filed the charges when Smisek was seven months pregnant after her condition was reported - nobody’s saying by whom - to the county’s juvenile probation office.

“I don’t make the laws,” Varie said. “But there is one on the books and I had to do something.”

Although she did not appeal her conviction, Smisek believes she was unfairly victimized by a capricious prosecutor who preys on the vulnerable while ignoring all the sexually active teenagers and unmarried adults who don’t produce children.

“If you uphold the law, you have to treat everyone the same,” she said. “The law doesn’t say pregnant teenagers or non-pregnant teenagers.”

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