Legalized Incest In Indiana
Q: What really makes this Indiana incest law ambiguous is that the section that makes incest a crime does not define a victim, but the bars to prosecution section is written in terms of the age of a victim. I don't think incest has a victim; even if one of the participants is underage, that person is a victim of a rape or child molestation, which is a separate offense. If that's true, then I guess you'd have to construe the bar to prosecution based on the age of the victim as simply inapplicable (as well as poorly drafted). I'm just talking, though. I'm not a criminal lawyer and I'm particularly unappreciative of sex crime laws.
A: -In that case, I would have to argue that this is one of the cases where, because it's criminal and not civil law, the "victim" is the State, and since Indiana is over 31 years old, the SOL applies. -Assuming that example, the state can only prosecute someone for the crime of incest if the indictment is filed within 7 years of the act. If the victim is a minor child, there may be provisions tolling the SOL until 7 years after the kid turns 18. And, in cases of "repressed memory" where the kid did not know he/she had been abused until undergoing therapy as an adult, conceivably a prosecution could be begun within 7 years of that discovery, i.e. at virtually any time, decades after the act. The statute you cite sounds like a legislative attempt to put a definite time "cap" on such actions based on adult recovery of childhood repressed memories, in the interest of finality. The legislature may have been motivated to pass such a law by expert testimony questioning the general validity and reliability of such recovered repressed memories as evidence in criminal cases (it is, to say the least, still controversial). So how does that apply to you, over age 31, having sex with your equally adult sister? Not at all. You can still be prosecuted within (in my assumption) 7 years of the act no matter how old you are.