Sexual Offences in UK Law

Where the offence or offences are in themselves grave enough to require a very long sentence. Where it appears from the nature of the offences or from the Defendant's history that he is a person of unstable character likely to commit such offences in the future, and 3. Where if the offences are committed the consequences to others may be specially injurious, as in the case of sexual offences or crimes of violence.

Although "consent" is an equally common word it covers a wide range of states of mind in the context of intercourse between a man and a woman, ranging from actual desire on the one hand to reluctant acquiescence on the other. We do not think that the issue of consent should be left to a jury without some further direction.

The test must be—is the evidence capable of tending to persuade a reasonable jury of the accused's guilt on some ground other than his bad character and disposition to commit the sort of crime with which he is charged? The similarity would have to be so unique or striking that common sense makes it inexplicable on the basis of coincidence.

Returning to the exercise of the court's discretion, or more accurately, its judgment, whether a sentence of imprisonment for public protection should be passed when the necessary criteria are established, the court is entitled to and should have in mind all the alternative and cumulative methods of providing the necessary public protection against the risk posed by the individual offender.

But the message of sections 9 and 13 is that any sort of sexual activity with a child under 16 is an offence, unless in the case of a child who has reached 13 the perpetrator reasonably believed that the child was aged 16 or over. There are many good policy reasons for the law to convey that message, not only to adults but also to the children themselves.

By contrast, the terms of sections 5 and 6 of the 1956 Act namely offences of having sexual intercourse with girls under 13 (section 5) and with girls under 16 (section 6) are inconsistent with the application of the presumption. The "young man's defence" under section 6(3) makes clear that it is not available to anybody else. The linked provision in section 5, dealing with intercourse with younger girls, must therefore also impose absolute liability.

But restricting the circumstances in which sufficient probative force to overcome prejudice of evidence relating to another crime to cases in which there is some striking similarity between them is to restrict the operation of the principle in a way which gives too much effect to a particular manner of stating it, and is not justified in principle.