As announced in a Daily Mail op ed today, the Secretary of State for Justice intends to increase the sentences of men who kill women in abusive, degrading or dangerous sexual violence: ‘rough sex’.
Although the Domestic Abuse Act in 2021 clarified that you cannot consent to serious harm (and so death), there was still a possibility that men could convince a judge in sentencing that the violence was consensual. This possibility seemed to be exploited by a series of men convicted of terrible violence but who received only short sentences for manslaughter. Clare Wade KC note this issue in her review of Domestic Homicide Sentencing.
Most recently we saw this in the case of Sophie Moss, a mum of two young children, who was killed in a sustained strangulation assault by an occasional sexual partner. He received a sentence of 4 years and 8 months, after killing Sophie in what the Court of Appeal judge called “a risky sexual practice”. This was despite his wife telling police that he would strangle her unbidden, and the level of violence he used against Sophie leaving his hands hurting. We were unable to have his sentence increased when we attempted to intervene in November 2021, and we understand he has already been released from prison.
We understand the Government’s change will be achieved as an ‘aggravating factor’ in sentencing, which requires judges to add between 4 and 6 years to a sentence.
We wait to see the full detail but this is a very welcome step forward in ensuring these violent offenders do not get away with terrible fatal assaults on women and girls. There is still more to do on ensuring that the many women in the UK who have suffered non fatal violence in sex see their cases prosecuted, and that we crack down on the ultraviolent porn that is radicalising so many men into terrible assaults on women. And we must not allow abusive men’s claims that ‘choking’ - strangulation - is just a sex act: this is an act of deliberate, intimate harm against women and we should not be coerced into pretending otherwise.
Notes:
We Can’t Consent to This campaigns in opposition to violence against women, including the use of ‘rough sex’ claims to evade justice.
In 2020 we secured a clarification of the law that consent is no defence to serious harm (or death), in the Domestic Abuse Act. Since then, Northern Ireland has also introduced change. Scotland’s Law Commission is considering whether a change should be made to the crime of homicide.
We know of more than 60 women killed and many more injured in violence claimed to be consensual. See our 2020 research here on the prevalence of these claims in criminal justice.
However many, many more women are impacted by this violence, and we estimate 2 million UK women may have experienced unwanted “choking” or strangulation in til then consensual sex: “I thought it was Normal, 2021”
Choking - aka strangulation - causes unconsciousness in as little as 4 seconds, indicating brain injury. This act causes a large range of harms including stroke, miscarriage, and long term brain injury.
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