[conspire] Meet Robert Howard Schnacke

[Deirdre Saoirse Moen]

On Fri, Nov 22, 2019, at 11:01 PM, Rick Moen wrote:
> After some positions of increasing
> responsibility, he became a prosecutor -- Assistant US Attorney and
> chief of the Criminal Division in the Northern District of California,
> 1953-1958, and then U.S. attorney for the Northern District of
> California, 1958-1959.

[...]

> Over his long career, Robert heard quite a few important cases, which
> I'll omit here, and instead get to the personal-connection-to-me bit:
> In October 1957, 44-year-old Assistant US Attorney and
> chief of the Criminal Division for the Northern District of California 
> Robert Howard Schnacke had a brief fling, outside his year-old marriage,
> with a 16-year-old woman.  And that produced, well, me.

To be clear, this means a US Attorney who was head of the criminal division of our local federal district committed a felony, as minors cannot legally consent to sex. There are exceptions for "within a couple of years" of age these days, but the entire law was intended to protect *exactly this situation*. It's statutory rape, and for a good reason.

When I was a teen, the historic rulings were such that that applied to men of age and women who were minors, but not vice-versa. When I was 18, I was dating someone who was 17, but immediately broke off the relationship when a case made the law equally applicable.

Since then, the "within a couple of years" exception was added in many states.

More on the current state of affairs: https://www.wksexcrimes.com/minors-cannot-legally-consent-to-sex-ca-pc-261-5/

Deirdre