But it might help in your evaluations if you bother to familiarize yourself with the laws being applied. Battery statutes have been around forever, but you assumed facts about them which just aren't so.

This story of a man accused of 'attempted sexual battery' is a good example of that. My thinking about it has changed since I have found out that he has plead guilty to attempted sexual activity rather than attempted sexual violence. It changes a lot.

It seems that you also assume thing about "statutory rape" which are necessarily null and void.

Until now, I have interpreted the "statutory" as disqualifying the normal interpretation of the succeeding part of the term, "rape". I.e., it means sex done by someone a bit too young in the eyes of the law. Now, let me search and think a bit...

The National Incident-Based Reporting System (of the US) defines it as: "Nonforcible sexual intercourse with a person who is under the statutory age of consent." Other sources say the same thing. The logic is that statutorily someone can't consent (though, a lot of the time, they can), and, if they can't consent it is rape, statutorily. Kind of like, if some government writes a law that states that I am a polar bear. Then I am a statutory big carnivore with white fur, statutorily living in the arctic. Though I'm not, really.