In the years following the 2013 debut of Adult Swim’s cartoon phenomenon “Rick and Morty,” its star and co-creator Justin Roiland became a titan of the animation and video game industry and a rock star of youth counterculture. His artistic style and caricatures became ubiquitous in cannabis culture, and his career expanded into producing other animated series, creating NFTs and leading a virtual reality gaming studio. In 2017, a “Rick and Morty” collaboration with McDonald’s led to such a viral frenzy that police had to be called to at least two locations.
But as he partied with Los Angeles’ superstars and traveled the country for conventions, he also found he could use his fame to strike up conversations and develop relationships with young fans, including some who were underage. This is according to interviews with 11 women and nonbinary people who shared thousands of messages with Roiland from 2013 to 2022 — with nine of the people saying he turned the exchanges sexual. Of those nine people, three said they were 16 when they started talking to Roiland. To corroborate their stories, the 11 women and nonbinary people also shared pictures, videos, social media posts, emails, and plane ticket and Uber receipts with NBC News.
Warning: Lengthy and graphic details
If there are exceptions then “age of consent” in Virginia doesn’t mean the same thing as it does in other states, so all this shows is that they’re re-defining the term.
I don’t think that tracks; I’ve always been under the impression that age of consent was just when you could consent to sexual activity. It didn’t account for age differences, power dynamics, or other factors that push it towards statutory rape. It was “at this age, they are able to consent to activity”, and then you would have the limiting factors of age difference, power imbalance, family, etc applied through other statutes.
I very well could be wrong or just applying knowledge of my own local area to places that don’t operate that way, so I’ll bow out on that. I do know that age of consent isn’t just a blanket shield against statutory rape in some locales or situations, though. The “statutory” part of statutory rape isn’t limited to only age of consent.
“Statutory rape” just means rape by law, not necessarily by any kind of consent (since legally they can’t).