Every person, but especially every male, should be aware of the huge changes that are taken place in the law in the area of Sexual Assault. The purpose of these blogs is to help everyone understand the changes in law and how they affect you.
PART I – THE POLITICS OF LEGAL CHANGE
There is not a more controversial area of law in the law involving sexual assault. Almost all of the changes in the Criminal Code have been politically driven mainly by special interest groups who really have an agenda that includes the now famous #Metoomovement and other ways of putting pressure on politicians, with the end result basically being to eliminate any defence to a sexual assault claim. We have reached a point where now all someone has to do is just make an allegation that someone has acted inappropriately and not even criminally and this would be enough to have serious consequences for the person that has been accused.
Approximately 99% of all sex crimes involved men offending against women or boys offending against girls so for the purposes of this seminar I will refer always to the male is being the accused and the female is being the complainant. The end result of all of these changes in laws and the many changes in laws to come, will be a profound shift in the way that Judges deal with Sexual Assault issues. Judges are now under extreme pressure everywhere that if they dare to acquit a man who’s been accused of sexual assault, despite what the circumstances may be, then they run the risk of becoming the subject of public criticism led by these special interest groups. Because Judges are human beings too it is very difficult to see how they will not fall victim to this pressure. While the special interest groups will always proclaim that they are protecting women, the problem arises that most women in the society either do not agree with these radical changes that are being made, or are simply uninformed about them. The great problem arises because most women in society have either brothers, husbands or sons that could very well become the victims of these radical and inequitable changes to the justice system. The problem when having a special interest group driving changes to the law especially in the area of Criminal Law, is that these groups are driven not by ideals of fairness and justice but by ideology and it’s almost always results in bad laws being made.
If some of you were not born here and came from different cultural settings, this information would be of particular importance to you especially if you’re the parents of young boys who are either in or approaching sexually active ages. It is almost guaranteed that your children, be they boys or girls, have no idea what the law says regarding sex crimes in this country. Probably the most important thing that should be taken into account when drafting laws that involved young persons under the age of 18 years is that teenagers as you well know do not think like adults. That fact has been taken into account in the Criminal Youth Justice Act that governs how young persons are dealt with under the law. The one thing that must be taken into account when drafting any laws, especially laws regarding sexual relations between teenagers is that teenage boys are really driven by one thing and that’s hormones, and that teenage girls are driven by 2 things, hormones and emotion. When you realize this, and the fact that these issues lead teenagers to think much differently about these issues than we do, you’ll realize how serious an impact these changes to the Criminal Code can have especially when it relates to teenage boys.
We will discuss the impact of these changes in our next blog seminar.
