Statutory Rape Law Gaining Stature

Deputy District Attorney A.J. Pongratz speaks with a quiet reverence about the victims he feels compelled to protect. But he also communicates a fiery conviction about his newest marching orders in the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office: stepping up the prosecution of adults accused of statutory rape.

“There was always a perception there were more important things going on out there,” Pongratz said. “Drive-by shootings, murders, carjackings - really violent stuff. But what you’re dealing with in this crime is basic, really. The victims are still children.”

Following reports that 67 percent of babies born to teen mothers are fathered by adult men, Gov. Pete Wilson vowed to try to stop this trend in his January State of the State speech.

His proposed budget for the 1996-1997 fiscal year delivered on that promise. It includes a $6 million boost to a program funding statutory-rape prosecutions, said Michael Carrington, deputy director of Wilson’s Office of Criminal Justice Planning. If passed, the boost will allow all California counties to dedicate a prosecutor and an investigator to such crimes. Sixteen counties, including Sacramento, already are participating in the pilot program.

Interest in the program is “hot,” said Carrington, who said he has fielded inquiries from legislators, victim advocates and newspapers from across the country.

San Diego was the first to file charges under the new policy, charging a 19-year-old cabinetmaker with having unlawful sex with his girlfriend, 13. Sacramento, meanwhile, has about 25 such cases in the works; eight already have garnered guilty pleas.

In one such case, a 23-year-old was arrested on statutory rape charges for relationships he had with two victims, ages 17 and 14. The older one was his girlfriend; the 14-year-old was a model he met at a community event. Pongratz said he gave her “the full-court press,” flirting with her, seducing her and ultimately followed her into a dressing room where he pressured her to have sex.

As in that case, most of these cases involve males in their 20s preying on adolescent girls, Pongratz said. In one such case, a 28-year-old man pleaded guilty to the statutory rape of a 16-year-old girl who is developmentally disabled. In another, the perpetrator was 23, the victim, 16. That defendant pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a year in county jail because drugs were involved.

Not all of the perpetrators are men. Two women, ages 27 and 38, have been prosecuted for having unlawful sex with teenage boys.

Alcohol is involved in many cases. So it was when six men ages 18 to 21 allegedly picked up two underage girls at a party. The men took the girls to a Rancho Cordova motel where they “put them through the paces,” Pongratz said, pressuring them and even threatening them into having sex.

“There is a tendency to say these are just kids doing what kids sometimes do today,” Pongratz said. “But when you look carefully, what you find is really sad. These victims are being taken advantage of because of their age and lack of maturity. One of the girls in the motel case said she was pressured and pressured and finally relented and just laid there and watched TV while this was going on and then said, ‘Are you done?”’

Where society sometimes ignores these crimes, Pongratz, who has two children and another on the way, seems intent on not dismissing the vulnerability of children. Although some of the victims may act mature, the culpability rests with adults, who should know better.

“This is important to me, because I really do believe these are children we’re talking about,” he said. “They don’t need some vulture swooping down and basically handing out alcohol and narcotics and then seducing them. They are children and they deserve our protection. As adults, that’s our job.”

He said he hopes the stepped-up enforcement will result in changed attitudes about sex with minors, a change that may be occurring already - in small ways.

In the motel case, a father planning to bail out his son called Pongratz first to find out what really happened. After Pongratz explained the situation, the father decided not to post bail - at least not right away.

“He said that maybe his son needed to cool his heels in jail and accept the punishment he deserved,” Pongratz said.

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