Sex with a 16-year-old when you’re 30 is just wrong…

…there’s no way an adult celebrity and a schoolgirl are equal when it comes to sex. We need to rethink the age of consent, writes Franki Cookney

One of the comedian’s accusers claims she was ‘picked up from school by cars BBC paid for’ (PA)

The allegations against Russell Brand over the weekend have got people examining the age of consent. Rightly so. That a 30-year-old man would embark on a sexual relationship with a schoolgirl feels instinctively wrong to many of us.

The woman in question, “Alice”, who has said she now feels she was groomed by Brand (though he has denied all of the allegations), has called for consent law to be reviewed in light of her experience. “The law enabled it,” she told reporters for The Times, The Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches investigation which was published at the weekend, with the documentary airing on Saturday night. “It shouldn’t be legal for a 16-year-old to have a relationship with a man in their thirties.”

Now, most of us are comfortable with the idea that a 16-year-old can consent to sex with another 16-year-old; that two teenagers can have a sexual relationship. But we start to feel iffy when it’s an adult in a sexual relationship with a minor. As the age gap increases, so does our disquiet. That’s not mere hand-wringing or moralising, and it’s not about trying to deny young people their sexuality. It’s because we understand implicitly, even when we can’t articulate it, that an imbalance of power can affect consent.