CONSENT

A member of a group under police surveillance who had entered into a sexual relationship with an undercover police officer was unable to establish that her lack of knowledge as to the officer’s true identity vitiated her consent to sexual relations within the meaning of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 s.74. There was no justification for extending the common law position as contended for by the claimant, namely that the matter to which the deception related had to be sufficiently serious in objective terms as to be capable of being regarded as relevant to a woman’s decision-making and that, subjectively, the deception went to a matter which the woman regarded as critical or fundamental to her decision-making.

Although a judge had unnecessarily and improperly intervened during a defendant’s examination-in-chief, the interventions were not so significant as to materially impair the defendant’s ability to put his case before the jury. The judge’s interventions, combined with deficiencies in his summing-up, had not deprived the defendant of a fair trial.

Where a 19-year-old offender had taken advantage of a 12-year-old girl’s willingness to engage in sexual activity there were no exceptional circumstances that justified a non-custodial sentence; a community order was replaced by a sentence of three-and-a-half years’ imprisonment.

An appellant’s conviction for rape was safe where there was substantial evidence before the jury that the victim was intoxicated and incapable of consenting to sexual intercourse with him. There was no presumption that the conviction was unsafe because the judge did not give a good character direction.

When dismissing an appeal against conviction for sexual activity involving children, including rape and trafficking within the UK for sexual exploitation, the court considered the issue of consent. Where a vulnerable or immature individual had allegedly been subjected to grooming for sexual purposes, the question of whether real or proper consent had been given would usually be for the jury to decide, unless the evidence clearly indicated that proper consent had been given.

Guilty verdicts on two sample counts of rape relating to a six-year period were logically inconsistent with acquittals on four specific counts of rape against the same victim. A reasonable jury could not, on the paucity of the stand-alone evidence concerning the sample counts, be sure of guilt in relation to them if they rejected the specific events.

A trial judge had correctly ruled that the contents of a conversation revealing details about a rape victim’s previous sexual behaviour were not admissible under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 s.41.

A rape victim’s evidence that she had little memory of the events was not sufficient for the judge to remove the case from the jury. There had been sufficient evidence for the jury to decide whether the victim had consented.

The court gave guidance regarding the assessment of a complainant’s mental capacity in a criminal trial when the alleged offences involved proof of a lack of consent.