Someone sent us an email with an Oklahoma law office web page talking about the age of consent. They must have misread what we said because we did not mention Oklahoma but simply said– this situation continued for 4 1/2 years, well past the legal age of consent in some states.
We were not being specific because age of consent varies between the states. Hawaii in 1999 the age of consent was 14. In 2007, Oklahoma’s age of consent was 16..However, the problem of adjudicating the Morris and most cases of this nature is that people apply the modern law, not the law at the time.
We tried to look at the law for 1984 for the age of consent but all the websites talking about it, no matter what search words we used, stated the modern law of age 16. Now the alleged incident started in 1982 and went on for 4 1/2 years.
The question is what was the law for the age of consent in 1982, not 2024, 2000, or even 1999. So far we cannot locate any records for 1982 that talk about the age of consent. The best we have been able to find is that in 1999 and 2007, the age of consent was 16 for the state.
The other record, 1920 did not list an age of consent. so somewhere between those 3 dates the age of consent was implemented. The key is to find the official records to see what it was in 1982 -87.
Depending on what it says may explain why the father and the church did not have Morris arrested. This is something that is a part of true justice. We cannot apply later laws to ‘crimes’ committed before those laws were implemented.
They don’t apply to the alleged offense. If people want their own perverted justice, then they will ignore this fact and apply modern law to get the desired results. Again, we are not arguing guilt or innocence here but pointing out the factors needed to achieve true justice.
Too many people do not care about this fact and ignore it. It is not just unbelievers that do this and this is why we have so much injustice in the world today. People aren’t happy with the results that come with true justice but seek their own penalties that satisfy their sinful desires.
As Christians, we cannot allow that. The truth needs to be told so everyone knows the right path to take. We cannot let the abuse of the law thwart true justice.
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