on when the person charged is over 21 years.

_(b) Girls Not Liable for Permitting Indecency or Carnal Knowledge_

The law has always been chivalrous to females. It is not an offence for
them to allow to be done to themselves things which, when they are done,
render the other party liable to heavy terms of imprisonment.

There is also a practical reason why the State has not legislated
against females on this point, viz., the anticipated difficulty of
obtaining convictions if the female, when called as a witness, is able
to plead that she should not be required to testify lest by doing so she
might incriminate herself. This practical objection, however, would lose
all force, both as regards cases where the accused are under 21 years
and those in which they are over 21 years, if the proposed offence by
females were restricted to girls under 16 and thus triable in the
Children's Court, and not by indictment. The judicial process in the
Children's Court is, or can be, such a speedy process that the Crown
would not be hampered in making its charge against the male in the
ordinary Criminal Court by the possibility that the case would fail if
the girl pleaded that she should not be required to answer questions.

_(c) Girls Not Liable for "Indecent Assault" on Boys_

It should also be made an offence punishable in the Children's Court for
any girl to indecently assault a male.

Under section 208 of the Crimes Act every person, male or female
(including a boy under 14 years of age), may be convicted and sentenced
to seven years imprisonment for an indecent assault on a female. Under
section 154 a male may be sentenced to ten years imprisonment for an
indecent assault on a male (consent is not a a defence); but a female
cannot be convicted of "indecent assault" on a male if he permitted the
act.

This anomaly may have arisen because, in ancient times and, later, when
the criminal law was set out in statutory form, it was not considered
likely that females would descend to conduct which would entice males
into the commission of one of these offences.

Having regard to the evidence before the Committee that many boys have
been tempted and encouraged into sexual crime by the indecent conduct of
girls themselves, in picture theatres and elsewhere, the time has
arrived when boys should be protected by letting the girls know that
they too commit an offence when they act towards boys in an indecent
manner.

=(5) Propose