UNDER-AGE DEFENDANTS, CHILD SEX OFFENCES AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Identifieur interne : 002F86 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 002F85; suivant : 002F87UNDER-AGE DEFENDANTS, CHILD SEX OFFENCES AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Auteurs : Antje Du Bois-PedainSource :
- The Cambridge Law Journal [ 0008-1973 ] ; 2009.
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DOI: 10.1017/S0008197309000245
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unit="volume">68</biblScope><biblScope unit="issue">1</biblScope><biblScope unit="page" from="22">22</biblScope><biblScope unit="page" to="25">25</biblScope></imprint></monogr></biblStruct></sourceDesc></fileDesc><profileDesc><creation><date>2009</date></creation><langUsage><language ident="en">en</language></langUsage></profileDesc><revisionDesc><change when="2009">Published</change><change xml:id="refBibs-istex" who="#ISTEX-API" when="2017-09-5">References added</change></revisionDesc></teiHeader></istex:fulltextTEI></fulltext><metadata><istex:metadataXml wicri:clean="corpus cambridge not found" wicri:toSee="no header"><istex:xmlDeclaration>version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"</istex:xmlDeclaration><istex:docType PUBLIC="-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v2.2 20060430//EN" URI="journalpublishing.dtd" name="istex:docType"></istex:docType><istex:document><article dtd-version="2.2" article-type="case-report" xml:lang="EN"><front><journal-meta><journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">CLJ</journal-id><journal-title>The Cambridge Law Journal</journal-title><abbrev-journal-title>C.L.J.</abbrev-journal-title><issn pub-type="ppub">0008-1973</issn><issn pub-type="epub">1469-2139</issn><publisher><publisher-name>Cambridge University Press</publisher-name><publisher-loc>Cambridge, UK</publisher-loc></publisher></journal-meta><article-meta><article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.1017/S0008197309000245</article-id><article-id pub-id-type="pii">S0008197309000245</article-id><article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">00024</article-id><title-group><article-title>UNDER-AGE DEFENDANTS, CHILD SEX OFFENCES AND HUMAN RIGHTS</article-title><alt-title alt-title-type="left-running">The Cambridge Law Journal</alt-title><alt-title alt-title-type="right-running">Case and Comment</alt-title></title-group><contrib-group><contrib><name name-style="western"><surname>Du Bois-Pedain</surname><given-names>Antje</given-names></name></contrib></contrib-group><pub-date><month>03</month><year>2009</year></pub-date><volume>68</volume><issue>1</issue><fpage seq="11">22</fpage><lpage>25</lpage><permissions><copyright-statement>Copyright © Cambridge Law Journal and Contributors 2009</copyright-statement><copyright-year>2009</copyright-year><copyright-holder>Cambridge Law Journal and Contributors</copyright-holder></permissions><counts><page-count count="4"></page-count></counts><custom-meta-wrap><custom-meta><meta-name>pdf</meta-name><meta-value>S0008197309000245a.pdf</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta><meta-name>dispart</meta-name><meta-value>Case and Comment</meta-value></custom-meta></custom-meta-wrap></article-meta></front><body><p><sc>If</sc> a 15-year-old boy has sexual intercourse with a child under 13, then this technically amounts to an offence under section 5 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (“SOA”), dubbed by Parliament “rape of a child under 13”. He also commits an offence under section 13 SOA, read in conjunction with section 9, of “sexual activity with a child”. For both offences it matters not whether the victim agrees or objects to the activity, nor whether the perpetrator thinks the victim is already 13 or older. He is liable provided he intends to perform the sexual act as such.</p><p>In <italic>R.</italic> v. <italic>G</italic> [2008] UKHL 37, [2008] 1 W.L.R. 1379 the prosecution accepted the defendant's plea of guilty to a charge under section 5 SOA, based on his admission that, aged 15 at the time, he had penetrated the vagina of his 12-year-old victim with her permission, the victim having told him previously that she was 15 years old. The defendant was convicted and sentenced to a 12-months' detention and training order (reduced on appeal to a conditional discharge for a period of 12 months). The Court of Appeal certified the following two questions for the House of Lords: (1) May a criminal offence of strict liability violate Article 6(1) and/or Article 6(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”), and (2) Is it compatible with a child's rights under Article 8 to convict him of rape contrary to section 5 SOA in circumstances where the agreed basis of plea establishes that his offence fell properly within the ambit of section 13?</p><p>In answering these questions, the House was unanimous that the defendant's strict liability as to his victim's age in section 5 SOA does not violate Article 6 ECHR. The House was split, however, on the question whether the prosecution violated the defendant's rights under Article 8 ECHR by continuing his prosecution under section 5 SOA when it was no longer alleged that he forced himself upon his victim against her will, and accepted that he had believed her to be 15 years of age. The majority (Lords Hoffmann and Mance and Baroness Hale) maintained that the defendant's continued prosecution and conviction for an offence under section 5 raises no issue under Article 8, properly understood. Lords Hope and Carswell in their dissenting speeches argued, by contrast, that the defendant's conviction of an offence that now for the first time bears the label of rape amounts to a disproportionate interference with his Article 8 rights.</p><p>The House was certainly justified in giving short shrift to the complaint under Article 6. The right to a fair trial is properly concerned with criminal procedure, not substantive criminal law, and the presumption of innocence similarly does not say anything about what the mental or other elements of the offence should be. True, on this reading of Article 6 one may well be concerned that the provision is a toothless watchdog against the oppressive exercise of state power since the state is, in theory, permitted to make all manner of conduct (or even mere presence in a certain place), with no mental element required, a criminal offence (so long as the burden of proving whatever facts constitute the offence remains on the state). But section 5 SOA is not the sort of offence in respect of which this particular quandary needs unpacking. This is so because (to use Antony Duff's felicitous terminology in “Strict Liability, Legal Presumptions, and the Presumption of Innocence”, in A.P. Simester (ed.), <italic>Appraising Strict Liability</italic> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)), although liability in relation to the age of the victim may be <italic>formally</italic> strict, it is not <italic>morally</italic> strict. The age threshold is set so low that any person interacting with the victim will be aware that the victim may well be too young, in the eyes of the law, to engage in sexual activity.</p><p>But there is more to the Article 8 complaint than Lord Hoffmann, for the majority, admitted. He insisted that provided that the conduct in question – here sexual intercourse with a child under 13 – is appropriately criminalised, it cannot be viewed as “private” and neither prosecution nor punishment for the offence can raise an issue under Article 8. But Article 8 is not incapable of capping the state's ability to penalise children and teenagers “in their own best interests” for non-forced, mutually desired sexual interactions below the age of consent. The Article gives special protection to that part of a person's conduct that is a significant aspect of, or that contributes directly to, the person's lifelong journey of self-discovery and personal development. It can therefore allow of no doubt that, in principle, formative sexual activities and experiences fall within the protective scope of Article 8(1). Of course this does not mean that they must all be lawful. Article 8(2) enables the state to step in when sexual activities violate the rights of others, or “for the protection of public health and morals”. Moreover, the state has an obligation to protect vulnerable individuals from violations of their physical or psychological integrity. But such protection risks being turned on its head when mutually voluntary sexual interactions between children below the age of sexual consent are rendered mutually criminal.</p><p>Undoubtedly, though, this is what Parliament has done, and it was not argued in this case that this choice as such violates young persons' rights under Article 8. The issue before the House was whether the application of section 5 SOA to young male perpetrators must be tempered so that its application to non-forced, mutually voluntary penile penetration between persons who are both under the age of sexual consent is avoided. Contrary to what the majority believed, it is hard to accept that in anything but a technical legal sense, “rape of a child under 13” accurately describes what this defendant has done.</p><p>But what is a prosecutor to do when the definition of an offence runs roughshod over important moral distinctions, such as between coerced and uncoerced conduct, and between the conduct of adults exploiting an imbalance of power, and the conduct of age-peers which generally does not? The legislator has long been shown the way to a manageable model, inspired by the French solution to require a significant age gap between perpetrator and victim of non-coerced under-age sex (see John Spencer, “The Sexual Offences Act 2003: (2) Child and Family Offences” [2004] Crim.L.R. 347). But how might such considerations effectively guide the exercise of prosecutorial discretion only? One reason the defendant in this case was charged with an offence under section 5 was that the victim had initially alleged that the intercourse had happened despite her objections. How likely is it that investigators in future cases are going to press victims of an offence for which coercion is not a prerequisite of liability, on whether they may have willingly co-operated with the perpetrator? There is indeed, as Lord Hope put it, “a lesson to be learned here”. Sadly, it is once again the lesson that bad law generates great injustice.</p></body></article></istex:document></istex:metadataXml><mods version="3.6"><titleInfo lang="en"><title>UNDER-AGE DEFENDANTS, CHILD SEX OFFENCES AND HUMAN RIGHTS</title></titleInfo><titleInfo type="alternative"><title>The Cambridge Law Journal</title></titleInfo><titleInfo type="alternative" lang="en" contentType="CDATA"><title>UNDER-AGE DEFENDANTS, CHILD SEX OFFENCES AND HUMAN RIGHTS</title></titleInfo><name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Antje</namePart><namePart type="family">Du Bois-Pedain</namePart><role><roleTerm type="text">author</roleTerm></role></name><typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource><genre type="case-report" displayLabel="case-report" authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://content-type.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://content-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XTP-29919SZJ-6">case-report</genre><originInfo><publisher>Cambridge University Press</publisher><place><placeTerm type="text">Cambridge, UK</placeTerm></place><dateIssued encoding="w3cdtf">2009</dateIssued><copyrightDate encoding="w3cdtf">2009</copyrightDate></originInfo><language><languageTerm type="code" authority="iso639-2b">eng</languageTerm><languageTerm type="code" authority="rfc3066">en</languageTerm></language><relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>The Cambridge Law Journal</title></titleInfo><titleInfo type="abbreviated"><title>C.L.J.</title></titleInfo><genre type="journal" authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/JMC-0GLKJH51-B">journal</genre><identifier type="ISSN">0008-1973</identifier><identifier type="eISSN">1469-2139</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID">CLJ</identifier><part><date>2009</date><detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption><number>68</number></detail><detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption><number>1</number></detail><extent unit="pages"><start>22</start><end>25</end><total>4</total></extent></part></relatedItem><identifier type="istex">615A609E14727390429A8D788AAE41982CEC842C</identifier><identifier type="ark">ark:/67375/6GQ-LCJRCW8W-Z</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.1017/S0008197309000245</identifier><identifier type="PII">S0008197309000245</identifier><identifier type="ArticleID">00024</identifier><accessCondition type="use and reproduction" contentType="copyright">Copyright © Cambridge Law Journal and Contributors 2009</accessCondition><recordInfo><recordContentSource authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XBH-G3RCRD03-V">cambridge</recordContentSource><recordOrigin>Copyright © Cambridge Law Journal and Contributors 2009</recordOrigin></recordInfo></mods><json:item><extension>json</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>application/json</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/document/615A609E14727390429A8D788AAE41982CEC842C/metadata/json</uri></json:item></metadata><serie></serie></istex></record>Pour manipuler ce document sous Unix (Dilib)
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