Talk:Sexual offences in the United Kingdom

Jimmy Savile???

Is the burden on UK police departments higher or lower to provide evidence to the as-yet unsubstantiated allegations against the late Sir Jimmy Savile OBE???johncheverly 00:44, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

That is not relevant to this article. James500 (talk) 00:46, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Why not. This is a very relevant issue in England right now, very much in the news, and involving police across all the UK.johncheverly 00:59, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

A dead person cannot be prosecuted. James500 (talk) 01:05, 1 May 2013 (UTC) If he can't be prosecuted, there can't be a precedent. James500 (talk) 01:25, 1 May 2013 (UTC) And you might want to look at WP:NOTNEWS as well. James500 (talk) 01:09, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

1st source

I changed a dead link to this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/homicides2007.pdf, which is the same source. 81.158.229.42 (talk) 20:18, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Age of consent

The age below which sex with a child is always considered rape is 13, not 16. I have corrected that error. While it is an offence to have sex with a child aged 13 to 15, that is not rape if the child has consented to have sex. This avoids having most of the teenage boys in the country being labelled as rapists. The list of offences in the article makes this clear, as does a detailed reading of the act already cited.Wymspen (talk) 17:31, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

No, it's still statutory rape to have sex with a 13 year old. --31.51.237.55 (talk) 12:33, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Assessing this article as a list is limiting the scope of this article

Considering this article to be a list is limiting the scope of this article. There is so much more that can be discussed about sexual offences, such as why some offences are sexual assault, others are sexual exploitation, and yet others are sexual morality offences where the acceptable sexual standards of the community have been offended against. Merely thinking of these offences as a bundle of offences specified in a particular piece of legislation overlooks the evolution of these offences in both common law and parliamentary thinking. How did these laws come about and what influence have the development of these laws had on the concept of sexual offences throughout the British Commonwealth and the rest of the English speaking world? This article might be assessed a list now, but it need not be in the future. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 08:55, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Proposing a rewrite

Hi there, I would like to suggest a re-write of this article.

At the moment it only seems to cover the legal elements of sexual assault in the UK in a very limiting list format. I would like to remove these lists and widen the scope of this article by adding new sections covering rape statistics, information about the demographics of victims and perpetrators, prevention and support services, activism, notable incidents, and attitudes towards rape in British society, as well as any other important areas.

Here are some articles covering rape and sexual assaults in different countries that I believe would be good guidelines to follow: Sexual violence in Finland, Rape in Sweden, Rape in India.

Because this is the only article on the site dedicated to rape in the UK it is important we cover this very serious topic more comprehensively.

Please let me know if you support this or not. I welcome any suggestions or questions.

I will also tag the main contributors to the article here. @Allan Liefting @James500 @The Vintage Feminist

- Schnitzella (talk) 18:20, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

The list should remain. It is essential necessary information. Most of these offences are notable and should have their own articles. The article should include information about statistics and demographics etc for all sexual offences, not just rape. [There was no offence of "male rape", "anal rape" or "oral rape" before 1994, so the old statutory offences of buggery and indecent assault are not obviously less historically important. Indeed, if the offence of "assault by penetration" under section 2 were committed with a particularly sharp or otherwise dangerous object, it is not obviously less serious now (and it has the same maximum penalty as rape under section 1).] Books on sexual offences normally include all sexual offences, not just rape. See, for example, Rook and Ward on Sexual Offences, and the chapter on "sexual offences" in "Archbold Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice", "Blackstone's Criminal Practice", and "Stone's Justices Manual", or the relevant title of Halsbury's Laws of England.

Further, the article should include the an introduction to the history of sexual offences, such as the development of the old Sexual Offences Acts and the sexual offences that have been abolished (even a non-history book includes this, eg [1]). Most importantly, it should include a discussion of the common features of sexual offences, such as concepts of "consent", "touching" and "sexual" under sections 74 to 79 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. That is by far the most important thing to include in this article, and if you read a book like Smith and Hogan's Criminal Law (see section 18.2 on "recurring fundamental concepts") you will find that is how a discussion of this topic normally begins.

The article should also report praise and criticism of the law of sexual offences generally, see eg section 18.10 of Smith and Hogan on "overarching problems" and section 18.11 on "reform". James500 (talk) 21:18, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I understand your point, If you think it is worth keeping the lists, perhaps it would be a better option to create a separate article about rape and sexual assault in the UK with a broader and more humanistic scope and have this one focus solely on the legal aspects of sexual offences.

I still think that the lists limit the quality of the article as they are not particularly reader friendly and fail to cover other important aspects of the topic, including ones you mentioned above. It could be a good idea to condense them into more easily readable and concise information.

For example, the lists could be condensed into separate headings covering how each type of sexual offence is defined in UK laws, their legal history and other important details (e.g. there could be individual headings on how rape, trafficking, sexual activity with minors, etc are seen from a legalistic viewpoint). Another suggestion would be to include some notable case studies on these different offences.

I also discovered another article, Rape in English law, which this one could potentially be merged with or draw more information from. Schnitzella (talk) 19:06, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

I am also not sure as to why the reorganisation tag has been removed as the article still does not comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines, seeing as it continues to be predominantly made up of bullet point lists. I would therefore like to reinstate the tag. In future I would also recommend suggesting and justifying tag removals on the talk page before taking them down. Schnitzella (talk) 19:19, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

The topic of the article Rape in English law satisfies WP:GNG. It merits an article because it has received signifcant coverage in independent reliable sources. It should not be merged into this article or any other.

The lists improve the quality of the article. The lists are reader friendly and easily readable. Removing offences from the lists would violate WP:PRESERVE. It would be WP:POV to remove offences from the lists (because it would deny the existence and importance of those offences). The section Common features covers other important aspects of the topic, including the ones I mentioned above. The lists are now divided into separate headings that group related offences together.

The article complies with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. Wikipedia's guidelines have always allowed embedded lists in articles, including bullet point lists. The reorganisation tag was added because the lead contained information that ought to be in the main body of the article. I moved that information to a separate section headed "rape". Accordingly the tag was correctly removed because the problem to which the tag referred no longer existed. James500 (talk) 13:19, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I think you might have misunderstood my point, I did not want to remove these offences but rather thought it would be a good idea to give them their own headings and add more contextual information to accompany them (e.g. case studies, historical context, etc). Since my last response I can see that you have already started to do this.

I would still like to create a separate article on rape and sexual violence in the UK with a more social focus and will start working on this soon (If you are interested I have a very basic draft in a sandbox linked on my user page). I also think this article is now starting to look a lot better compared to the first time I saw it and I commend your work. Schnitzella (talk) 14:29, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I think the main edit I did on this was to clean up some refs but if anyone wants to do a rewrite then go for it. The Vintage Feminist (talk) 23:26, 11 August 2023 (UTC)