there are some advantages in being a very young parent.

What an assumption you are making to say that the boy was coerced? How can you possibly have any idea of what took place?

A youth of twelve or thirteen can consent to sexual activity with an individual no more than two years older than them. A fourteen- or fifteen-year-old can consent to sexual activity with a partner who is no more than five years older than them.

If two under-age teenagers have sex it is illegal but the law is not widely enforced and usually the Crown stops proceedings on the grounds of public interest

If parents are aware of their under-age children having sex, they could theoretically risk prosecution for aiding and abetting unlawful intercourse

Police are not planning to prosecute anyone in the case of a 13-year-old boy who has just fathered a child.

The force had looked at the case and decided it was "not in anyone's interests" for a prosecution to take place, a Sussex Police spokeswoman said.

You, however, stated categorically that he must have been coerced, or even intimidated.

but a 15 yo enging in sex with a 12 yo is clearly a case of the older "partner" taking advantage, possibly intimidation or coersion

A few googled facts about other countries' laws is not 'flawless research'

It's curious how that vicious dog pops up anytime someone disagrees with Morgan.

just because 5 or 8 males have claimed to have slept with her does not mean that they actually did.

Alfie Patten. Does the name ring any bells? He's a tabloid editor's dream and is rapidly being elevated to the status of national celebrity. Not in a good way, but that's not really the point. Still struggling? How about "that boy Alfie". You know – the 13-year-old dad who looks about eight and is currently locked in a tug-of-love battle with two other teenagers, all three claiming to be the father of newborn Maisie Roxanne.

Every so often, a news story emerges that is so disturbing as to prompt complete strangers to pass comment about it on trains, at bus stops and over the headlines in the corner shop. So it is with baby-faced Alfie, who stands, bewildered and exploited, at the centre of this immorality tale for our times.

"I thought it would be good to have a baby," Alfie told the Sun. "When my mum found out, I thought I was going to get into trouble. We wanted to have the baby, but were worried about how people would react. I didn't know what it would be like to be a dad. I will be good, though, and care for it."

When the interviewer – on video – asks 4ft Alfie how he will cope financially, his excruciatingly poignant response speaks volumes about his readiness to take on the responsibilities of parenthood: "What's financially?"

But along with nappy changing and night feeds, Alfie's crash course in adulthood has introduced him to a world where everything has a price, but little has value. What began as a deeply unfortunate, cautionary account of woefully ill-advised adolescent fumbling between Alfie, then 12, and his 15-year-old girlfriend, Chantelle Steadman, has deepened into an extraordinarily dysfunctional quagmire of children taking paternity tests, parents sanctioning underage sleepovers in the same room, and family breakdown, all of it played out on Channel 4 and in the red-top newspapers – for a fee.

Anyone doubting that Britain is broken need only to open yesterday's papers to see Alfie's dad, Dennis – father of nine, or possibly 10 children by various mothers – wearing a bizarre devil mask and brandishing a placard bearing the legend "No Comment Ring Max", a reference to PR guru Max Clifford, who has been drafted in by the parents apparently to maximise the earning potential of their children. Or exploit them, as it is also known.

No detail has been spared, not least to the Press Complaints Commission, which has announced that it is investigating whether payments to the Patten family breach its code of ethics. Local MP Charles Hendry, who wrote to the PCC, urged "an urgent assessment of actions that can be taken to stop this story becoming more grotesque by the day".

It might be too late for that: no detail is being spared, and the picture that results is one that would stretch credulity if it appeared in the grittily outrageous television series Shameless, which now appears a pale imitation of reality.

Neighbours of "the couple" in Eastbourne report that children barely into their teens routinely have sex behind the hedges in gardens, which raises the question of why the police aren't hosing them down with water cannon and frog-marching them home?

Meanwhile, indoors, Chantelle and Alfie shared a room, with her parents' blessing, when he stayed at her house - he even kept a spare uniform there, so frequent were his visits, although her parents say they had no idea the two were having sex.

And for all Alfie's enthusiasm for parenthood, two other boys, aged 14 and 16, have entered the fray, kissing, telling and claiming paternity of Maisie. It could be said that in this age of feckless fathers, their putting their hands up is to be saluted. Then again, the spur appears to have the prospect of tabloid payouts. Alfie has promised to take a DNA test as soon as possible, which will provide Clifford with a new twist. However, given that Alfie, voice unbroken, hasn't reached puberty yet, and that at least one commentator has wondered if it really is biologically possible for him to have fathered a child, it's fair to say he won't be getting any encouragement to beat a path to the lab before it's strictly necessary.

The two other boys, meanwhile, have apparently made sworn statements in front of a solicitor, giving chapter and verse of their alleged sexual encounters with Chantelle. One tabloid alleges that at the time of her daughter's conception, when she was 14, she was sleeping with no fewer than eight teenage boys on the estate. Chantelle's family insist she was a virgin until she and Alfie had sex; Alfie insists that he was Chantelle's only boyfriend and that Maisie was conceived on their first night together. Chantelle, one of five children, whose parents are both unemployed, says she was on the pill, but had forgotten to take it.

In such circumstances, it's hard not to be judgmental – not so much of Alfie and Chantelle, but of the adults who surround them, and those who have seized on their misfortune to market rather than protect them. The real outrage is not that two children had sex and made a baby, lamentable though that may be, but that in some quarters, parental rights and responsibilities have been warped beyond recognition, and children are being reduced to commodities, to be used, abused or discarded at will.

The examples are legion, on a sliding scale of atrocity. Think of Karen Matthews, mother of Shannon, who cynically orchestrated the abduction and drugging of her own child in order to claim a reward, or the Sheffield father sentenced to life imprisonment last November for raping his two daughters for years, resulting in 19 pregnancies and nine babies. Then there was Baby P, tortured and terrified by those who should have loved and nurtured him, or two-month-old Rhys Biggs, who spent most of his short life in agony from rib fractures and broken limbs inflicted by his former crack-addict mother, and died hours after her final attack.

However different is the case of Alfie, Maisie and Chantelle, there is a significant similarity: despite the tender age of the new parents, social workers appear to be equally thin on the ground. Instead, it is up to Alfie's father, he of the devil mask, to provide pastoral care. Rather damningly, when one newspaper asked Dennis Patten's mother Susan to comment on the arrival of her new great-granddaughter, she declined on the grounds that she didn't want to "interfere with my son's business interests".

Patten, who works for a vehicle recovery firm, and who no longer lives with Alfie's mother and their three children, has described how he was "gobsmacked" when Alfie, aka his business interest, broke the news of the pregnancy to him – although given that Jayde, one of his daughters from a different relationship reportedly became pregnant at 13, it surely can't have been that big a surprise.

"When I spoke to Alfie, he started crying," said Patten. "He said it was the first time he'd had sex, that he didn't know what he was doing and the complications that could come. I will talk to him again and it will be the birds and the bees talk. Some may say it's too late, but he needs to understand so there is not another baby."

Ah yes – the baby. She's the one who seems to get overlooked in all this. In the family photographs taken after the birth, Maisie Roxanne looks as though she's being cuddled by her brother, rather than her father. There is something so fundamentally wrong and unnatural about this little family group that it's hard to not to feel a knee jerk sense of revulsion.

Britain has the highest underage pregnancy rate in western Europe, despite channelling substantial resources into sex education for children as young as five. According to the Office for National Statistics, over the past decade 385 girls under the age of 14 have become pregnant, and more than 40 boys under 14 have fathered children; four boys aged 11 have had children in recent years.

Teenage pregnancies have become child pregnancies, and the buck must stop with parents. What hope is there on estates where semi-feral children have intercourse with multiple partners, men routinely father children with a series of women and little boys who become dads before their voices break are in line to be paid a fortune for the television rights?

While nobody would wish to return to the days when gymslip mothers were stigmatised, opprobrium can and should play a powerful role in modifying unwelcome behaviour – like sex among children. But on the estates of Eastbourne, no one seems to feel shame or guilt. Why would they? That Boy Alfie is a local hero, his father is quids in. He's to be congratulated, not pitied.

This is a story that – with the help of media consultants – will run and run. Alfie's life, and that of Chantelle and Maisie, will be served up for consumption like a soap opera. It might seem like a reasonable trade-off, but he'd better not get used to the attention. Now it's clear that there's money to be made, his five minutes of fame won't last. Sooner or later, an
11-year-old boy will come forward, new baby in his arms, and an exclusive interview on his lips.

And hovering in the background will be his father, fielding calls from the press on his mobile and proudly touting his latest business interest.