New Bill aims to prevent ‘rough sex’ killers using consent defence
Ministers pledge to protect victims and prevent more lenient sentences in ‘Fifty Shades-style’ deaths
MINISTERS have pledged to prevent alleged killers using the “Fifty Shades” defence of rough sex to counter murder charges.
The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) and Home Office are preparing to enshrine in law that consent cannot be used as a defence to actual bodily harm.
“We have committed to ensuring the law is clear that this ‘defence’ is unacceptable. We are looking at options on how to achieve this,” said the MOJ in a statement to The Daily Telegraph.
It will be debated today as part of the Government’s proposed new domestic abuse Bill, where three amendments have been put forward as options to prevent a defendant using a murder victim’s prior agreement to violent sex as an excuse for their subsequent death.
They are being submitted by a crossparty group of MPS, including former deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman and the Conservative MP Mark Garnier.
The first would enshrine in law a House of Lords ruling, known as R v Brown, where a group of men who willingly engaged in sadomasochistic sex were convicted of wounding and assault despite their defence claims that it was consensual.
The second would require the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to be consulted before any decision was taken to reduce a charge from murder to manslaughter because of a defence of rough sex.
The third would give someone killed in a sex session the same right to anonymity in court as a living rape victim, a move that would ease the suffering of family or relatives forced to listen to lurid claims by the defence about the sex life of their deceased loved one.
At least 60 British women have been killed in episodes of so-called “consensual” sexual violence since 1972, with at least 18 women dying in the last five years, according to the advocacy group We Can’t Consent To This.
In 45 per cent of those killings, the claim that a woman’s injuries were sustained during a sex game “gone wrong” resulted in a lesser charge, a lighter sentence, an acquittal or the death not being investigated, they say.
Earlier this year police criticised the “rough sex defence” in the trial of the killer of Grace Millane, the 21-year-old Essex backpacker murdered in New Zealand, warning that the term “retraumatises” victims and their families.
Ms Harman, a former solicitor general, said failure to change the law would be a “missed opportunity” and it would not be enough simply to amend prosecution and sentencing guidance to prevent the defence being used.
“No one doubts the Government’s recognition of this problem and their commitment to tackling it, but the stark reality is that nothing except legislation will stop this horrific crime,” she said. “We want it to be in statute alongside all the other measures on domestic violence.”