News Archive

Professor Jennifer Drobac talked about recent cases in Southern California where defense attorneys are asking judges to permit them to argue that victims consented willingly in sexual relationships with adults who molested them. The story appeared on May 4 on KCET, a PBS affiliate.

Professor Drobac helped California lawmakers draft the law that bans the issue of consent in these criminal cases, but not in civil actions. She urged them to make the law stronger at the time, but this version was the one legislators thought that they could pass," she said of the law.

"The claim itself, I would argue," Professor Drobac said of the defense claim in the PBS story, "is exploitative of children. I think these lawyers are further abusing these children by claiming they weren't damaged by the fraud and abuse that went on."

The story also makes a reference to her book, Sexual Exploitation of Teenagers: Adolescent Development, Discrimination and Consent Law.

Professor Drobac was a Visiting Scholar during the Spring 2018 semester at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, and Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Law, Brain and Behavior. She is conducting research for her next book, The Myth of Consent, which she is co-writing with Professor Oliver Goodenough. That work will explore the neuroscience of adult decision making and how the science should influence law reform. She is the R. Bruce Townsend Professor of Law at IU McKinney.