Recent Judicial Decisions
| Author | Rob R. Jerrard |
| Published date | 01 October 1996 |
| Date | 01 October 1996 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X9606900412 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
ROB R. JERRARD, LLB, LLM
Legal Correspondent for The Police Journal
RECENT JUDICIAL DECISIONS
Talk
to me: Telephone Silence Equals an Assault
R. v. Ireland Court of Appeal
(1996) The Times, May 22
The facts
The facts are taken from the judgment of Swinton Thomas,
U,
who said
that the charges arose as a result of the appellant Ireland making a large
number of unwanted telephone calls to three women. When the woman
answered the telephone there was silence. On occasions there were
repeated calls over a relatively short period. Each of the complainants
was examined by a psychiatrist who said in his witness statement that
the result of the repeated telephone calls was that each of them suffered
significant psychological symptoms which included palpitations, difficulty
in breathing, cold sweats, anxiety, inability to sleep, dizziness and stress.
An assault was any act by which a person intentionally or recklessly
caused another to apprehend immediate and unlawful violence: see R. v.
Savage (1991)155 JP 935; [1992] 1 AC 690, 740. In R. v. Chan-Fook
of including psychiatric injury but not mere emotion such as fear, distress
or panic.
In their Lordships' judgment, if the Crown could prove that the victim
has sustained actual bodily harm - in this case psychological harm - and
that the accused must have intended the victims to sustain such harm,
and that harm resulted from an act or acts of Ireland (namely, telephone
calls followed by silence), it was open to the jury to find that he had
committed an assault. As to immediacy, by using the telephone Ireland
put himself in immediate contact with the victims and when the victims
lifted the telephone they were placed in immediate fear and suffered the
consequences to which reference had been made.
Their Lordships' attention had been drawn to a number of cases
concerning the definition of assault, a few of some antiquity.
It
was of
importance that an assault did not necessarily include battery. For many
centuries it had been recognized that putting a person in fear might
amount to an assault: see Tuberville v. Savage [1669] 1 Mod. 3.
In Smith v. Chief Superintendent, Woking Police Station (1983) 76
Cr. App. R 234 - an important case for the purpose of this appeal - the
defendant had entered the grounds of a private property and looked
through the window of the house occupied by the victim; she was
terrified. The defendant was charged under
sA
of the Vagrancy Act1824
which provided: "Every person being found... in any enclosed... garden
for any unlawful purpose shall be deemed a rogue and a vagabond." In
October 1996 The Police Journal 357
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