HELEN SMITH: How the law punishes boys who are raped.

Imagine that your 14-year-old daughter engaged in sex with the 20-year-old man down the street. Anger would hardly begin to describe your feelings, but then imagine how you and your daughter would feel if she became pregnant and the man who abused her got custody of the child and your daughter had to pay him child support for the next 18 years.

This would not only be unthinkable in our society but most people would say that it bordered on abuse or worse. Yet, as reported in a recent Arizona Republic news story, this is what happened to Nick Olivas . . .

At the age of 21, Olivas found out he had a child and that he owed over $15,000 in back child support plus interest. . . .

When a state government finds out a 14-year-old girl is a statutory rape victim of a 20-year-old man, the common reaction would be to file criminal charges to put the predator in jail. But for male victims, child support laws turn state governments into the allies of abusers instead of advocates for the victims.

Why the double standard when the victim is male?

The main reason is that the law says so. According to a 2011 article in the Georgia Law Review “much of the law relating to child support is based on the fact that it is typically in a child’s best interest to receive financial support from mothers as well as fathers” even when there is “wrongful conduct by the mother.”