Misty Roberts, 43, faces sentences of up to 10 and seven years in prison after July 2024 sexual assault at pool party
The former mayor of a Louisiana city has been convicted of raping a 16-year-old boy during a party at her house while she was still in office.
Misty Roberts, 43, faces sentences of up to 10 and seven years in prison after a jury in the municipality of DeRidder on Tuesday found her guilty of two felonies: carnal knowledge of a juvenile – or statutory rape – as well as indecent behavior with a minor.
In October, in an unrelated case, her 40-year-old brother, Brandon Lee Roberts, pleaded guilty to raping two people: an underage girl and a young woman. He subsequently received a 42-year prison sentence.
In America, where most states the age of consent is 18, there are also laws that carve out exceptions if both parties are close in age. So a 19 year old is allowed have sex with a 17 year old, but a 45 year old isn’t.
It isn’t. 16 is more common (30 states, if I recall?), with only around a dozen having an age of consent of 18. It seems like more because those states include NY and CA, which are where most of the media in the US comes from. But yeah, most states have close in age exceptions and a couple have marriage as an exception to age of consent. Tugging that thread further, 48 states require you to be 18 to get married without an exception (usually involving court and/or parental consent), one requires you to be 19 and one 21. When you include those exceptions the hard minimum age of marriage in most states is 16 with several higher, with one state where it’s 15 and four with no hard minimum at all (including California and Mississippi, Massachusetts was one of these until 2018).