Intercourse between an adult and a child is called "statutory rape": that is, a rape that might not seem to fit the definition of the word because both participants consent in having sex but that is considered rape according to legal statute because children are considered unable to knowingly give such consent. The age at which a young person can legally consent to sex is different in different states but generally it is between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. In How I Learned to Drive, Uncle Peck anxiously counts the days leading up to Li'l Bit's eighteenth birthday, and she easily recognizes that he has been waiting for the opportunity to have sex with her legally, without fear of being put in jail for statutory rape.

Laws against sex with children have always been enforced in this country. In the 1960s, though, there was a...