Learn About Kentucky Consent Laws

If you are a resident of Kentucky, you should brush up on the consent laws to make sure that you don’t wind up accused of a sex crime.

In Kentucky, the age of consent is 16. But that is not all that you need to know, as mentally incapacitated or developmentally disabled individuals are deemed to be incapable of consenting to sexual activity.

The same applies to those who are rendered physically helpless, which includes unconscious states brought on from inebriation or impairment from alcohol or drugs. It’s also important to note that if a victim is too impaired to give consent for sexual activity but the defendant — who is also intoxicated — either commits sodomy or forcible rape against the victim anyway, he can be prosecuted because the voluntary intoxication of the defendant is no defense to those crimes.

“Consent” means different things to different people, but in Kentucky, a lack of consent legally means that:

— there was forcible compulsion; or

— the individual was incapacitated and couldn’t consent; or

— with sexual abuse offenses, additional circumstances where the victim doesn’t imply or express acquiescence to the activity.

Being charged with a sex crime is tough. Simply being accused of this type of thing can derail your life, no matter if the charges are eventually dropped or you are acquitted in court. The best thing to do after being arrested for a sex crime is to mount an aggressive defense against the allegations.

Because of the potential damage to your reputation and livelihood, it’s important to start immediately refuting each phase of the prosecution’s case.

Source: RAINN, “Consent Laws Kentucky,” accessed Aug. 05, 2016