Sex, Identity and Recognition: Re-thinking ‘Rape by Deception’

Chloe Kennedy

Edinburgh Law School

On December 14 2018, the decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions not to prosecute ex-DC Andrew Boyling for rape, indecent assault, procurement of sexual intercourse and misconduct in public office was upheld by the High Court in R (Monica) v DPP (henceforth Monica). The application for judicial review was brought by one of three women with whom Boyling, an undercover police officer, had a sexual relationship whilst posing as an environmental activist, named Jim Sutton. The case highlights significant issues relating to proper police conduct and the limits of state power but at its core is the question of when and why deception should undermine consent to sex. In this post, I put forward two arguments, both of which are based on my view that something important has been left out of previous attempts to answer this question. First, I argue that deceptions that are considered capable of undermining consent to sex can be understood as a form of ‘identity non- or misrecognition’ – a kind of failure on the part of the deceiver to respect the identity of the deceived. Second, I argue that conceiving of rape by deception in these terms provides a framework for thinking differently about where the boundaries of the criminal law ought to be drawn. Using Monica as a case study, my ultimate aim is therefore to suggest that identity nonrecognition could provide a foundation for this area of law going forward (as indeed it seems to have become in the recent past) but also to think critically about what this might mean in practice.

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What’s the Value of Civil Claims for Rape for Sexual Violence Survivors?

Nikki Godden-Rasul

Newcastle University Law School

Last month, an apparently rare Scottish civil case in which ‘Ms M’ was awarded damages for rape after an unsuccessful criminal prosecution against Stephen Coxen made the news. The often negative and distressful experience of the criminal justice process for sexual violence survivors is well documented, even in cases where the victim-as-witness is treated fairly and with respect by criminal justice personnel, and the case proceeds as it should.

Ms M’s experience was, unfortunately, not this best case scenario. She said that the criminal justice system is a ‘disgrace’: ‘my case wasn’t investigated as well as it could have been’ and ‘how the Crown represented my case, I think the Crown failed in that’. Despite this, she was not ready to give up on using the law to hold Stephen Coxen to account. Although a jury in the criminal case returned a verdict of ‘not proven’, in the Court of Session, Sherriff R B Weir QC found that Coxen had penetrated Ms M’s vagina and mouth with his penis without her consent, and he had no reasonable belief in consent.

At the time of the sexual assaults Ms M was an undergraduate student who met Stephen Coxen when she was on a night out following a house warming party. Ms M was so intoxicated that she did not have the capacity to give meaningful consent. Sherriff Weir concluded that it ‘has been established on the balance of probabilities that the defender ignored what would have been obvious signs of the pursuer’s intoxication, took advantage of her in that state, and continued to do so even when she began to evince distress and attempted to resist him’. Ms M was granted £80,000, to be paid by Coxen (AR v Stephen Daniel Coxen [2018] SC EDIN 53). Ms M said she hopes that the civil case shines a light on the failures of the criminal justice system in rape and sexual assault cases, a point emphasised by the Scottish Women’s Rights Centre who represented her.

The cries from certain corners that a successful civil claim after an unsuccessful criminal prosecution for rape is ‘double jeopardy!’ and/or ‘a threat to justice!’ were predictably loud and predictably baseless. The Scottish Women’s Rights Centre with JustRight Scotland, Rape Crisis Scotland, and a number of solicitors in Scottish Legal News have responded to highlight the factual inaccuracies and gross misrepresentations.

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Regulating Campus “Rape Culture”: Lessons from Complexity Theory

Professor Diane Crocker (Department of Sociology and Criminology, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada)

A few years back, my friend and I attended a panel discussing a Facebook group, the “Gentlemen’s Club,” that several male dentist students had set up.[1] The postings included sexist and misogynist comments about female classmates and the panel set out to address how to respond and promote a more respectful campus culture. I met my friend 25 year ago, while we were both undergraduates. At the time, she worked in women’s organizations and provided advocacy for women experiencing violence. But she had been away from that world for many years. At the end of the panel, my friend turned to me and announced her surprise that nothing had really changed in 25 years.

Her point was twofold. The attitudes revealed in the “Gentleman’s Club” echoed those on campuses during our undergraduate years. That hadn’t really changed. But her point spoke to another way in which nothing has changed. She felt disappointed that, in 25 years, we had not developed much new thinking about the problems. It struck her that we still doing the same kind of work to respond to the same old problems.

The “Gentlemen’s Club” presents only one example of current problems on Canadian campuses.

In recent years, Canadians have been confronted by seemingly endless stories about sexual harassment and violence on campuses across the country.

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Blind Desire: The Troubling Case of Gayle Newland

Professor Alex Sharpe, Keele University

Today, at Manchester Crown Court, Gayle Newland was, after a second trial, convicted of three counts of the sexual offence of assault by penetration,^[1] on the basis of ‘gender identity fraud.’^[2] After serving eleven months of an eight year sentence, the Court of Appeal set aside her original conviction in 2015^[3] because they found it to be ‘unsafe’ due to the summing up of trial judge, Roger Dutton.^[4] In my view, prosecutions of this kind should not be commenced. My reasons for taking this stance include, but are not exhausted by, opposition to criminal law overreach (criminalisation of non-coercive, desire-led intimacy constitutes a step too far), and concern over legal inconsistency (contrast prosecution of gender non-conforming people for sexual fraud with the fact that deceptions, for example, as to wealth, social status, drug use, criminal convictions, religious belief and/or ethnic status produce no legal consequences), and discrimination (‘gender history’ is not only singled out for special legal attention, but it is the gender histories of LGBTQ kids, rather than people at large (for we all have gender histories), that appears to exhaust state interest in historical facts about gender).

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Coming to Terms with Gender in Child Sexual Abuse

 

Dr. Kate Gleeson, Macquarie University, NSW, Australia

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is in its closing stages, preparing its final report due at the end of this year. The Royal Commission was established in 2013 in response to allegations of cover-ups of child sexual abuse in religious and secular institutions.

The Commissioners have since embarked on an extensive project of truth recovery and restorative justice, investigating the organisational practices of institutions ranging from dance schools, swim schools and yoga ashrams, to schools, Churches and orphanages of different denominations, although most allegations concern the Catholic Church.

Throughout the past four years the Royal Commission has held public hearings into more than 40 investigatory case studies, and conducted over 6700 private hearings for survivors to tell their stories unchallenged. Another 2000 private sessions are scheduled before the end of the year. Information gathered in hearings is believed to have led to at least 120 prosecutions of historical child sex offences across the country.

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New Research Article – “Campus Feminisms” (Cobb & Godden-Rasul)

Neil Cobb and Nikki Godden-Rasul, Campus Feminisms: Engaging the University with Feminist Agendas – A Conversation with Jess Lishak, Women’s Officer, University of Manchester Students’ Union, 2014-2016 (free link to article in Feminist Legal Studies).

Neil Cobb, University of Manchester

As Shakira Martin is elected this week as the next president of the National Union of Students (NUS), it is clear that NUS has received some bad press of late.

Durham student Tom Harwood’s challenge to Malia Bouattia for the NUS presidency on an ‘anti-NUS’ platform is the latest in a line of attacks in recent years criticising the NUS for being “moribund” and unrepresentative of mainstream students’ interests and concerns.

These criticisms – levelled both within and outside the student movement – are said by the NUS’s opponents to reflect a broader disaffection among today’s students with the union’s progressive left agenda.

Much of this comment has tended to simplify the NUS’ work, as well as drawing attention away problematically from the organisation’s undoubted and significant achievements in a range of important policy areas.

For those who remain supportive of the NUS’ broad commitment to a progressive left concern for social justice there is a particular need to keep front and centre the organisation’s tangible contributions to equality and diversity concerns, including some real success stories in the sphere of feminism and women’s rights.

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Inherently Brief: Volume 45

Snapshots of law, gender and sexuality news from the past couple of weeks.

The LGBTQ+ Community and “Gay Conversion Therapy”

William Lee, University of Manchester

Malta made history on the 7^th December 2016 when the Maltese Parliament unanimously approved the Affirmation of Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression Bill. Among other things, the Bill criminalises “gay conversion therapy”, giving legal recognition that for the position that “no sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression constitutes a disorder, disease or shortcoming of any sort”. This thereby relieves the LGBTQ+ community of potentially being subjugated to any “deceptive and harmful” act designed to change their sexual behaviour or gender identity.

The new Act in effect positions Malta as the first European country to ban “gay conversion therapy”.

The Business Insider states that Malta has been at the forefront of progressive social reforms in Europe since the Labour government was elected in 2013. For that, Malta quite comfortably deserves its ranking of being the best European country for LGBTQ+ rights as deemed by the European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA- Europe).

In light of such radical progress in Malta, this post will look briefly at the origins of “gay conversion therapy”. It will also briefly outline the United Kingdom (UK) and American’s current stance in regard to this practice.

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Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before: The Stranglehold of the ‘Gender Fraud’ Narrative

Alex Sharpe is Professor of Law at Keele University.

Over the last couple of years, I have written a series of articles addressing the issue of so-called ‘gender fraud,’ and opposing criminal prosecution on this basis. As recently as December of last year, I sought to take this prosecutorial practice to task in the context of the conviction of trans man, Kyran Lee, and before that Gayle Newland, whose eight year sentence shocked the nation.

I concluded the Kyran Lee piece with an ethical call, a plea for cisgender people to protest more vociferously regarding state intrusion into the lives of trans and gender queer people on the basis of a deception claim. I entertained the hope that the next witch hunt waiting to happen might be averted. Sadly, that hope has proved forlorn. Instead, it would seem that we are, much like Bill Murray, caught in a perpetual Groundhog Day – a cis and heteronormative ground zero.

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Transgender Inquiry Side-Steps Urgent Issue of ‘Gender Fraud’

Alex Sharpe is a professor at Keele University School of Law.

Yesterday, the government’s Women and Equalities Commitee released its long-awaited report on transgender equality^[1] The report is generally very positive in identifying a range of serious problems faced by transgender people and in making some important recommendations (especially in relation to healthcare provision, prison reform, depathologisation, and legal recognition of trans youth (16/17 year olds) and non-binary people). However, the committee side-stepped the important issue of prosecutions for ‘gender fraud,’ despite receiving written submissions on this subject. Accordingly, an important opportunity to address the travesty of such prosecutions has been missed.

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Deceit or Disappointment: ‘Gender Fraud’ Revisited

Alex Sharpe is a professor at Keele University School of Law. She has been involved in transgender law reform and activism for over twenty years, and has written extensively on the criminalisation of so-called ‘gender fraud’ under the Sexual Offences Act. Alex has recently been interviewed by CBC Radio Canada on the Gayle Newland case, together with Professor Madden Demsey. Her interview can be found here.

On 15th September, Gayle Newland was convicted of three counts of sexual assault under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. She is currently awaiting sentence, though a custodial term has been indicated. The case is the latest in a series of so-called, and so far successful, ‘gender fraud’ based prosecutions that have come before English (R v Barker [2012] (unrep); R v McNally [2013] EWCA Crim 1051) and Scottish (R v Wilson [2013] (unrep)) courts. Barker and McNally received significant custodial sentences^[1] and all convicted defendants have been placed on the Sexual Offenders Register for life.

Most of the media and legal coverage of the Newland case, like the cases of Barker, McNally and Wilson before it, has tended, unproblematically, to reproduce a fraud narrative, rather than challenge the ideological underpinnings of a worldview that makes fraud such an easy conclusion for courts and juries to draw. Of course, prosecution for ‘gender fraud’ is deeply troubling for other reasons. In the first place, prosecutions can be viewed as a significant example of criminal law overreach. That is, and irrespective of where we determine consent to end or deception to begin, the use of the criminal law to regulate deceptive, as opposed to coercive, sexual relations, can be viewed as an overly draconian and counter-productive measure.

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