Well to be honest, knowing and not knowing is the difference between knowing he was about to commit rape and thinking he was just gonna get laid by someone who is of legal age.
To clarify, are you disputing that he was unaware of her status as a minor or are you saying being aware of it is irrelevant?
Imo a punishment has to have purpose. Making an example of this guy is hardly going to be a deterrent to other blokes who are not IDing their one night stands on a night out...
The age gap is crazy but if everyone else thought she was 17-20, then its unsurprising he did. It is of my opinion that the parents should be put into the spotlight somewhat for this. I mean really, how does a 12 YO girl do this stuff without them knowing...
Whatever we may think is irrelevant. The law was broken, am sure we can all agree with that. As said in a older post, am sympathetic to his case, but he still needs to be punished since he is an adult and should take responsibility for his actions.
If you are drunk and do a crime, you don't get off, you still get charged and punished, sure with a lighter sentence or some kind, but you don't walk free from it.
The whole case sets a bad precedent in my view because what if the next guy comes along and uses the same defence, not unlike it hasn't been used before, it's not the first time someone has used the same defence and said he thought the girl was older but they still got done for it.
The only thing that stands out in his case is that the taxi driver and two coppers thought she looked older too. But let's examine that, am sure with makeup and how she dressed at 4-6am in the morning in the dark and low light helped that case. Could she got away with it if she was looked at in the day time?
Can we really trust the testimony from these people too? What if they have some connections to him or his family in someway and are covering for him? Far fetch I know, but it can't be ignored, after all the people at the BBC and in Government seem to got away with their dodgy history.
I think in the end, I don't think you should be trying to pick up girls at 4am in the morning from some taxi rack who are likely drunk out their heads on Vodka which also questions if these girls was of legal age, would they claim they was raped by this person?
Since I believe it's been made into law so that if you are drunk, you can't consent to sex since you are intoxicated, need to check up on that. (Yep, it's under the Rape and Sexual Offences Chapter 3: Consent)
I'm not saying to jail him or even put him on the sex register and I don't think the girl, let alone her legal guardians should be able to walk away free.
If your kid doesn't go to school, the guardians get fined right?
Some sort of community orders, family planning orders should be given all around to the girls family.
The guy could be ordered to pay some fines, unpaid work, some sort of alcohol awareness course, I don't know, something other then walk free.