Unlawful sex and other testy matters … билети бозгашт 25th of April, 2006 POST·MERIDIEM 09:35

Two interesting court cases today; the first via Steve on Livejournal. A nineteen-year-old was prosecuted last July for unlawful carnal knowledge in Galway after having consensual sex with his fifteen-year-old girlfriend (whom he thought sixteen); in the interval between the charges being pressed (which the girlfriend’s mother did on learning she was pregnant) and the case coming to court, she had his baby, he moved in with her, and their respective mothers came round to the idea of them as a couple. Coverage here and here.

So far, so reasonable. The most interesting detail to me was that the judge proposed, out loud, prosecuting the girl for conspiracy to commit a crime (that is, unlawful carnal knowledge), which was something she very clearly had done. But in a context where such a charge can be seriously considered, it seems to me that it gives any other interested parties an inordinate amount of power to fuсk up the lives of a couple.

And, via Margaret Marks, this PDF from which the essential details can be taken pretty quickly:

One evening the appellant had had a good deal to drink and was desirous of having sexual intercourse. Passing the complainant’s house he saw a light on in an upstairs room which he knew was the complainant’s bedroom. He fetched a ladder, put it up against the window and climbed up. He saw the complainant lying on her bed, which was just under the window, naked and asleep. He descended the ladder, stripped off his clothes, climbed back up and pulled himself on to the window sill. As he did so the complainant awoke and saw a naked male form outlined against the window. She jumped to the conclusion that it was her boyfriend, with whom she was on terms of regular and frequent sexual intimacy. Assuming that he had come to pay her an ardent nocturnal visit she beckoned him in. …

Now, the whole story is really funny, but this scarcely believing aside from the judge stands out to me:

So he descended the ladder and stripped off all his clothes, with the exception of his socks, because apparently he took the view that if the girl’s mother entered the bedroom it would be easier to effect a rapid escape if he had his socks on than if he was in his bare feet. That is a matter about which we are not called on to express any view, and would in any event find ourselves unable to express one.

Word of the day: Истгоҳ is one Tajik word for train station; станция is another. I would be mildly shocked if the latter wasn’t from Russian.