Just 'slight' contact with another's genital could mean rape

Just ‘slight’ contact with another’s genital could mean rape

Apr 27, 2010 News

… and jail for life

Penetration finds a broad and new definition under the new Sexual Offences Act.
According to the Act, penetration doesn’t just mean inserting the penis into the vagina or anus of another person. Penetration can also mean female to female genital contact, “however slight.”
This is how the Act defines penetration: any intrusion, however slight and for however short a time, of any part of a person’s body or of any object into the vagina or anus of another person, and any contact, however slight and for however short a time, between the mouth of one person and the genitals or anus of another, including but not limited to sexual intercourse, cunnilingus, fellatio, anal intercourse and female to female contact.
A person is guilty of the offence of rape if the accused engages in sexual penetration with another person without his/her consent. A person who commits the offence of rape is liable to conviction to imprisonment for life.
Sexual assault, which could land someone in jail for a maximum of ten years, involves just touching another person in a sexual way without the consent of the other person.
If someone is accused, one of his excuses cannot be that the person didn’t resist, or that the person was aroused, and might even have had had an orgasm during the process. In the case of a woman accused to raping a man, the Act essentially says she cannot claim that the man was enjoying it, and hence consented, because he ejaculated.
In the case of child sex offences, the Act specifies that a person commits the offence of rape of a child under 16yrs old if the accused engages in sexual penetration with the complainant or causes the complainant to engage in sexual penetration with a third party.
It is irrelevant, according to the Act, whether at the time of the penetration the accused believed that that complainant was over 16 or not.