Hey BA,
From a Fox News (a source I chose just for you) article:
>>The then 17-year-old and a group of friends made the ill-fated decision to ring in the New Year [2003] on a drug, sex and alcohol-fueled bender at a Days Inn in suburban Atlanta. Among the partygoers in the adjoining rooms were two girls, ages 15 and 17.
The next morning, the 17-year-old girl told her mother that she had been raped, according to court documents. Police searched the motel and found a video camera and a tape of the previous evening's events.
The tape showed Wilson having sex with the "apparently semiconscious" 17-year-old and the 15-year-old performing oral sex on him, according to documents.
Douglas County District Attorney David McDade took the case before a grand jury and came back with indictments against six boys.
Wilson and four others were charged with the rape of the 17-year-old and the child molestation of the 15-year-old. Georgia's age of consent is 16. A sixth teen was charged only with rape.
Five of the defendants decided to plead guilty to charges of child molestation and the lesser sentence of sexual battery. In exchange, they received 15-year sentences, of which they would only have to serve five years in prison, [Douglas County Assistant District Attorney Eddie] Barker said.
Wilson, who had no prior arrest record, chose to take his case to trial.
"The jury acquitted him of the rape charge, but convicted him of the aggravated child molestation charge," Barker said.<<
No one that I'm aware of is saying that what happened that night was morally defensible. To my knowledge, no one is saying that any of it was even legal. As I've highlighted above, five of the six charged (Wilson being the sixth) decided to plead guilty. The point isn't that what happened was okay, it's that the particular boy we're talking about was 17 at the time and the girl was 15. It's the age of the "perpetrator" that matters here (to a lot of people, maybe not you) as well as the difference in age (which is to say not much) between the participants.
