The law reaches out when teens have babies

MELONE E-mail: Click here Archive

By MARY JO MELONE

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 15, 2001

Every month, by law, Beverly Andringa gets the list.

Andringa, executive assistant Pinellas-Pasco state attorney, oversees the prosecution of sex crimes. And as Pinellas teen Joey Stellini found out the hard way, making his girlfriend Kerri Smith pregnant when he was 16 and she was 15, can be a felony.

I was prepared to think this was talk show material only, the kind of stuff that makes people of a certain frame of mind pound their fists about the government sticking its nose where it doesn't belong. I was even going to agree with the fist pounders. After all, if the government went after every kid having sex, half of the bay area's high schoolers would probably be in court.

Or so you'd think.

But the fact of a new life makes the fist pounding look academic, irrelevant.

The list Andringa gets reports every live birth, by month, to a girl 16 or under in Florida.

In February, there were 311 across the state. (The numbers are distressingly steady, month to month, Andringa said. The math is easy. That makes for roughly 3,600 babies born to girls in Florida in a year.)

In Tampa, there were 20 such cases in February. In St. Petersburg, seven. Clearwater, two. Dade City, two. New Port Richey, one.

The mothers were as young as 13, the fathers as old as 22. When the fathers appeared on the birth certificates, that is. Most of the time, Andringa said, the cops have to try to hunt them down to see if a crime has been committed.

Imagine being a parent of one of these girls and going through the ordeal of discovery and pregnancy and birth -- and then having a cop appear at the door asking questions about what your daughter did and who she did it with.

Cops do this regularly, Andringa said.

Joey Stellini was originally charged under the law commonly used in Pinellas and Pasco counties, the law against lewd and lascivious acts performed on anybody under 16. The fact that the sex was consensual doesn't matter. Whether the other person was sexually experienced doesn't matter.

Stellini could have gotten up to five years in prison. If he had been over 18, he could have been sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.

But most of the time, unless the father has other charges pending or was a repeater -- Andringa said she knew of one guy who'd made no less than three teenagers pregnant -- the sentence will be what Joey Stellini got, probation. The terms of probation usually mean the defendant must get a job and pay child support.

"We want to turn that young father into a responsible adult, maybe faster than he would normally, but unfortunately that situation was created," Andringa said. "So we're almost putting another hat on, a social worker's hat."

Cases get prosecuted particularly if the mother's parents or guardians demand prosecution. That was one big reason Stellini was charged.

The father is prosecuted if he has failed to help support the baby financially.

But cases don't get prosecuted if the baby is placed for adoption. Then the father has no responsibilities to live up to.

They often don't get prosecuted if the teenagers are close in age, like Stellini and Smith. "Then," said Andringa, "the closer it is to be kids experimenting."

The law would seem to be based on the outmoded idea that boys and men are always the instigators of sex, never the other way around. The story of Stellini and Smith might have been different, though, if she had been the older of the two. Then the law would have probably assumed she was the perpetrator.

Is all this crazy?

Nope. If the father won't come forward voluntarily, and the mother seeks state aid to support her baby, shouldn't he be asked to show at least a little of that precious commodity called responsibility?

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