Until last year, Utah’s youngest adults — at 18 — could be charged and sentenced far more harshly than 17-year-olds for having sex with a younger teen of 13.
A law passed by the Utah Legislature in 2024 gave prosecutors a new, less severe option when there is no force or coercion involved and the 18-year-old is still enrolled in high school.
The change — initiated by Senate President J. Stuart Adams and Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore — is Utah’s latest grappling with a question faced by lawmakers nationwide: How should the criminal justice system handle the nuanced issues surrounding teens whose brains are still developing, when it comes to “mutually agreed” sexual activity?
[Read more: Utah’s Senate president prompted law change that helped a teen charged with child rape]
Utah criminal law has a bright line before age 14: Children under that age cannot legally consent to sex or sexual touching.
For older minors, the laws are complex — they vary based on the age of the person who is having sexual contact with them, provided that person does not use force or coercion.
Here’s a breakdown of Utah’s current laws.
What if both teens are under age 14?
Utah prosecutors faced a challenging case years ago when a 13-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy engaged in sex. They decided to charge each child — in a delinquency petition, as it is called in juvenile court — with child abuse.
The boy was the perpetrator in the case against him, and the girl was the perpetrator in the case against her.
In 2007, the Utah Supreme Court dismissed the juvenile case against the girl after she appealed.
“We conclude,” the justices wrote, “that the filing of delinquency petitions against both participating parties produces an absurd result not intended by the Legislature because, like all sexual assault crimes, the statute presupposes a perpetrator and a victim.”
The justices noted that they were describing the children’s sexual contact as consensual “in its conventional, rather than its legal, sense,” because children under 14 cannot legally consent.
What about teens of other ages?
In 2017, Utah lawmakers adopted new standards for the criminal charge of “unlawful adolescent sexual activity.” They were trying to address teens of various ages who “mutually agree to the sexual activity” when they are too young to legally consent.
The move followed startling data from the Utah Sentencing Commission, which looked at how many Utahns were charged with child rape, object rape of a child or sodomy of a child in 2016.
It found that there were more defendants under the age of 18 who faced those counts than defendants age 25 and up.
Adults charged with these crimes against children face 25-year minimum mandatory prison sentences. The defendants under age 18 did not face those penalties since the cases were handled in the juvenile justice system, but lawmakers saw the frequency of kids facing such serious charges as a problem.
The new rubric they created for teens who “mutually agree” hinges on the age gaps between them. Some examples:
Pam Vickrey, executive director of the Utah Juvenile Defender Attorneys, said Utah laws were “sweeping up youth” who were willingly engaging in sex before the 2017 changes.
“What we know about adolescent brain development is that children do not foresee risks,” she said. “Thus, strict liability statutory rape statutes should not apply to children.”
What about adults and teens?
A child under 14 cannot legally consent to sex, regardless of any claim that they agreed to an adult’s actions. So any 18-year-old who has sex with a child under 14 can be charged with rape of a child — a first-degree felony with the mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years.
But the new law carved out a narrow exception for 18-year-olds who are still enrolled in high school and have sex with 13-year-olds who — despite not being able to legally consent — agree to the activity.
Instead of the first-degree felony that an 18-year-old who has graduated would face, prosecutors now can charge them with a third-degree felony.
Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, R-Clearfield, has told The Salt Lake Tribune she disagrees with this change and will move to reverse it — which means the Utah Legislature may again be debating these issues.