Quote:
Originally Posted by MBates
Difficulties in defining bright lines in this area of human behaviour are, in practice, revealing a routine disconnect between what the law is and how members of society generally act. How the law is applied to factual circumstances is, in my opinion, becoming increasingly unpredictable and therefore unsatisfactory for the realm of criminal law.
In my estimation, there is a high frequency of sexual interactions every day in Canada that would not be thought of by an average person as unlawful, and yet are prohibited sexual assault. As such, whether a person faces a sexual assault prosecution has become increasingly dictated by one factor: whether a sexual partner decides to make a police report alleging non-consensual sexual contact.
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That’s an excellent summary of the issue. We want the matter of sexual consent to be a clear, bright line. But given real-world human behaviour, that’s impossible because we can never know what’s happening in someone else’s head.
Which isn’t to defend the accused here. It’s just that this trial is a high-profile example of why this is such a murky and fraught area of the law.