Sexual Offences Act 2003

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Sexual Offences Act 2003
United Kingdom Parliament
Statute book chapter:	42
Introduced by:
Territorial extent:	??
Dates
Date of Royal Assent:	November 20, 2003
Commencement:	??
Other legislation
Amendments:	??
Related legislation:	??
Status: Unknown
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The Sexual Offences Act 2003 is an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom that was passed in 2003 and became law on May 1, 2004.[1]

It replaced older sexual offences laws with more specific and explicit wording. It also created several new offences such as voyeurism, assault by penetration, causing a child to watch a sexual act, and necrophilia (specifically, penetration of any part of a corpse).

1 Major Changes
2 Criticisms
- 2.1 Transition from old to new law
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Major Changes

The Act makes many changes to the United Kingdom's sexual crimes laws, including reforming law dating as far back as the Sexual Offences Act of 1956.

Rape has been redefined from the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (amended in 1976 and 1994) to read:

"A person (A) commits an offence if-
(a) he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person (B) with his penis,
(b) B does not consent to the penetration, and
(c) A does not reasonably believe that B consents."

Rape previously did not include penetration of the mouth. The Act also changes the way in which lack of consent may be proved, and section 75 and 76 of the Act list circumstances in which lack of consent may be presumed.

A new offence of assault by penetration is defined as penetration with any object to the anus or vagina.

The act also now includes provisions against sex tourism. People who travel abroad with the intent to commit sexual offences can have their passports revoked or travel restricted. However, this part of the Act has yet to be enforced by a test case in the UK and has been criticised by numerous high profile litigants due to its complexities.

The definition of child pornography has been changed to also include images of 16 and 17 year olds (note that the age of consent remains at 16).

Group homosexual sex has been decriminalised.

[edit] Criticisms

The Act has faced criticism on several grounds, the most controversial of which is the criminalizing of various common behaviours, such as laws which, on the face of it, outlaw consensual "sexual hugging" in public places or by underage persons, even when both participants are underage, followed by the issue of guidance notes which countermand this, saying they should almost never be prosecuted.

The law is unique since neither the Home Office nor the Police have any intention of policing it or prosecuting those who break it except in extreme circumstances. This has not changed much; underage sex by teenagers has never been actively pursued by either the Police nor the Crown Prosecution Service.

The Home Office says legalising consensual sexual activity between children "would damage a fundamental plank in our raft of child protection measures". A spokesman said, "We are not prepared to do this. We accept that genuinely mutually agreed, non-exploitative sexual activity between teenagers does take place and in many instances no harm comes from it. We are putting safeguards in place to ensure that these cases, which are not in the public interest, are not prosecuted - by amending guidance to the police and Crown Prosecution Service."

Criticism comes from Action on Rights for Children: "Laws should mean what they say. It's astonishing that the government could consider legislation with the prior intent of issuing guidance to countermand it. I worry about the message it sends to young people - it seems to say that sometimes the law means what it says and sometimes it doesn't." Spokesperson Terri Dowty also fears that it could lead to unreasonable private prosecutions, such as by angry parents who don't like their child's boyfriend or girlfriend.

Professor Nicola Lacey of the London School of Economics comments: "What the Home Office would say was that they wanted to use the criminal law for symbolic impact, to say that it's not a good thing for kids to be having sex. My counter-argument is that the criminal law is too dangerous a tool to be used for symbolic purposes. With this on the statute book, it will give police and prosecutors a lot of discretion. It could be used as a way of controlling kids who perhaps the police want to control for other reasons. Kids who perhaps are a nuisance or who belong to a group who attract the attention of the police in some way."

[edit] Transition from old to new law

The 2003 Act repealed the Sexual Offences Act 1956 and several other statutes dealing with sexual offences. Section 141 of the Act gave the Home Secretary the power to make rules by statutory instrument to deal with the transition from the old to the new laws, to cover the situation where a defendant is charged with offences which overlap the commencement date of 1 May 2004. However no such "transitional provisions" were ever made. This resulted in cases where, when a defendant was accused of committing a sexual offence but the prosecution could not prove the exact date, and the offence could have been committed either before or after 1 May 2004, he had to be found not guilty, regardless of how strong the evidence against him was. This was because a sexual offence committed before 1 May was an offence under the old law, but an offence committed on or after that date was a different offence under the new law. For example, an assault might either be indecent assault under the 1956 Act, or the new offence of sexual assault under the 2003 Act, depending on when it happened, but it could not be both. If the prosecution could not prove beyond reasonable doubt which offence had been committed, then the defendant could be convicted of neither.

The Court of Appeal first dealt with this problem in December 2005, when the prosecution appealed against the decision of a judge to order a jury to acquit a defendant for precisely that reason. Dismissing the appeal, Lord Justice Rose said: "If a history of criminal legislation ever comes to be written it is unlikely that 2003 will be identified as a year of exemplary skill in the annals of Parliamentary drafting."^[1]

This situation was not resolved until Parliament passed section 55 of the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006[2] (which came into force in February 2007).