Sexual harm
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02645505211002319c |
| Subject Matter | In court |
There was also no necessity for prohibiting the ownership or use of a vehicle
without prior notification to the police, given that the essence of the offenders’
conduct had for the most part been to keep themselves out of the limelight and
to use mobile phones to despatch others to deliver the drugs, there being
limited evidence of any of them making a car journey.
As for prohibition of driving, escorting or arranging the travel of any person
under the age of 18 in any vehicle (‘save for members of your family whose
parent or guardian is aware of your conviction(s) for [trafficking] offences’),
the Court was unpersuaded of the necessity of such a restriction.
As for duration, a significantly shorter period than 15 years would suffice and a
term of 7 years was substituted.
R v WABELUA, ALFORD and KAREMERA, [2021] 1 Cr App R(S) 3.
Appropriate ambit of restraining order
On pleading guilty to breaches of an anti-social behaviour order and to one
instance of sending a malicious electronic communication [in circumstances that the
ensuing appeal judgement did not consider it necessary to explain], I. incurred a
total term of 36 months’ imprisonment and was made subject to a restraining order.
In addition to prohibiting him from contacting named persons and from entering a
specific area, that order purported to prevent him from various actions including:
‘being in the company of a child under 16 unsupervised by an adult’; ‘being in the
company of or talking to any lone female without her consent’; and ‘drinking or
having an open container of alcohol in a public place’, save in licensed premises.
Dealing with an appeal related exclusively to the order, the Court of Appeal
noted that a restraining order (imposed under the Protection from Harassment Act
1997 s5) ‘cannot be made for the protection of the world at large or for the pro-
tection of people who either were not the victims of the offence or mentioned in the
order’. Several of the specified restrictions, including the above, were too general in
their application and thus had to be struck out.
R v IRONS, [2021] 1 Cr App R(S) 22.
Sexual harm
Networking in child pornography: Relevance of mental disorder?
Police officers investigating chatroom exchanges in which M. (using the identifi-
cation name ‘YNG MUST SUFFER’) had boasted of raping and killing a girl aged 9,
attended his address where search of his devises evidenced his possession of
images of young children (including a video of a boy aged around 12 months)
being subjected to penetrative sexual abuse and in obvious pain/distress. He
explained that as a feature of his schizophrenia he had heard voices in his head
telling him that he was a paedophile and it was those voices that had made him
begin to explore this through communication with like-minded others. While he was
bailed in prosecution proceedings he was detected using the identity name of
300 Probation Journal 68(2)
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