Women and Justice: Jurisdiction

The claimant, a Sri Lankan national, was working in England with a valid work permit when she was made redundant. The claimant claimed that she had been subjected to sex discrimination and harassment on numerous occasions. She also claimed that her dismissal was a further act of sex discrimination. In this case it was held that a worker knowingly employed under an illegal employment contract could bring a sex discrimination claim as the claim was not so inextricably bound up with her employment as to be defeated by a defence of illegality.

The claimant, who did not wish to become pregnant, consented to her husband, whom she had married in an Islamic ceremony, having sexual intercourse with her on the basis that he would withdraw his penis before ejaculating. He decided that he would not withdraw, just because he deemed the claimant subservient to his control, she was deprived of choice relating to the crucial feature on which her original consent to sexual intercourse was based. Accordingly her consent was negated. She became pregnant as a result. Contrary to her wishes, and knowing that she would not have consented, and did not consent to penetration or the continuation of penetration if she had any inkling of his intention, he deliberately ejaculated within her vagina. In law, this combination of circumstances falls within the statutory definition of rape. In this case, following the conditional consent established in Assange, he was found guilty of rape.

The defendant and the complainant had been involved in a sexual relationship for some time when the complainant started to receive threatening text messages and telephone calls. The complainant, who was unaware that the defendant was sending the messages, confided in the defendant and allowed him to contact the police on her behalf. He did not do so but over a long period sent her text messages purporting to be from a succession of police officers dealing with the bogus investigation, and he obtained £700 from the complainant for security protection which he pretended to arrange. Eventually the complainant wanted to break off the relationship with the defendant, but on approximately 50 occasions over a four-year period the defendant, posing as a police officer, sent text messages telling the complainant that she should have sexual intercourse with him, and that she would be liable to a fine if she did not. The complainant complied, although she would not have done but for those messages. Subsequently, the complainant approached the police, following which the defendant was arrested. During a police interview the defendant admitted that he had been responsible for the fictitious scheme and that on numerous occasions the complainant had not truly consented to intercourse. Since the complainant had been persuaded by deceptions, the court held the defendant guilty of rape.

The parties began a relationship and the defendant bought a house in her sole name in which the parties lived together as man and wife and had four children. The defendant, who throughout their time together earned more money than the claimant, and sometimes almost twice as much, made all the payments due under the mortgage and paid the household bills. The parties then separated and the claimant left the property while the defendant remained there with the children. The claimant successfully applied to the judge for, inter alia, an order for sale of the property and an equal division of the proceeds. In this case it was held that where a domestic property is conveyed into the joint names of cohabitants without any declaration of trust there is an assumption that interest is equal. To prove interest is not equal, it must be proved that the parties held a common intention that their beneficial interests be different from their legal interests; to discern the parties' common intention the court should look at the parties' whole course of conduct in relation to the property, including more stereotypically feminine input such as redecoration, contributions to household expenses, etc and not just the initial contributions to purchase price, thus allowing some women more opportunity to claim an interest in their family home.

S was employed by Bull as a temporary secretary and was subsequently given a permanent placement responsible to the Marketing Manager, R. S resigned on the ground that she found working with him intolerable as R allegedly sexually harassed her. S never confronted S nor made any identifiable protests about his behavior with the exception of complaint she made about him telling dirty jokes to colleagues in her presence. But she had made complaints to her mother and colleagues at work. Although the tribunal decided that no single incident was serious enough to be capable of constituting sexual harassment, they did find that there had been a series of sexual inferences with a pervading sexual innuendo and sexist stance and that R realized that they were unwanted and were bullying in nature. With regard to the liability of Bull, the tribunal found that colleagues in the personnel department were well aware of the applicant's deteriorating health and that she had made complaints to other members of staff which had been dismissed. In those circumstances there should have been an investigation into the cause of the illness and the complaints that had been made. By failing to implement this, Bull committed a repudiatory breach of contract as they failed to deal with the issue of sexual harassment adequately. The tribunal concluded that the applicant was entitled to compensation for unfair dismissal by reason of sexual discrimination. The Employment Appeal Tribunal dismissed the appeal and added that whilst not “gross: the behavior of R towards S was most inappropriate in the workplace. The EAT placed the burden on the victim to place the harasser on notice that she does not welcome his conduct and endorsed the reasonable person perspective in assessing a victim’s rejection. The question at issue should be was the victim subjected to a detriment on the grounds of her sex. A one-off ace may suffice. The Court also directed tribunals to pay attention to the impact of totality of successive incidents, individually trivial.

Gwyneth Bebb, upon being denied admission to the Law Society to take the preliminary examination to become a solicitor, took the matter to court. In Bebb v. Law Society, the Court of Appeal stated that the question of whether the gender-neutral language of the statutes meant that women could gain admission to the bar was settled through “long usage” in the common law and found that women were not included under “persons” in the Solicitor’s Act of 1843. Additionally, women were considered to have an additional disability at common law, namely that after marriage they are not able to enter into contracts with third parties. As every woman held the potential of being married, this disability was also applied to unmarried women.

Two offenders were convicted at first instance of (i) trafficking AH, a 19 year old girl, from Romania to the UK for sexual exploitation (s 57(1) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003) and (ii) controlling the prostitution of AH for gain (s. 53(1) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003). The first offender received a sentence of 30 months imprisonment for the first offence and 24 months’ imprisonment for the second offence. The second offender was sentenced to 24 months imprisonment for the first offence and 18 months imprisonment for the second offence. The Attorney General appealed to the Court of Appeal to review the sentences on the grounds that the judge at first instance had not taken account of aggravating factors and the impact of the offences on AH. The Court of Appeal agreed that the sentences did not reflect the totality of the offences, which involved bringing AH into the UK by deception and then coercing her to work as a prostitute and corrupting her in the process. Therefore, the Court of Appeal imposed a harsher sentence of 4 years’ imprisonment on the first offender and 3 years’ imprisonment on the second offender for the first offence. The sentences in relation to the second offence were not changed.

The defendant was convicted of rape and appealed on the grounds that there could only be an absence of consent if the victim's mind had been overborne by fear of death or duress. The victim only began to struggle in earnest after penetration had occurred. The Court held that it is not necessary for the prosecution to prove that what appeared to be consent was actually submission induced by fear, force or fraud, but only that the jury should be instructed to focus on the victim's state of mind immediately before the act of sexual intercourse, in light of all the circumstances. The conviction was affirmed.

The first appellant, P, was seeking asylum from being returned to Kenya on the grounds of a fear of persecution because of the violence that both she and her children had suffered from her husband in Kenya, especially as domestic violence tends to be accepted in Kenya and the police had not effectively protected her against her husband. The second appellant, M, seeks asylum on the grounds of fearing that she would be subjected to female genital mutilation at the hands of her father, who is a member of the Mungiki sect that practices FGM, and who had already previously performed FGM on her mother, causing her mother's death. The Court allowed both appeals for asylum, but did stipulate that not all cases of either domestic violence or FGM would automatically give rise to a claim to protection and asylum.

In the Ireland case, the appellant was convicted of three counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm for harassing three women by making repeated silent telephone calls to them. In the Burstow case, the appellant was convicted of unlawfully and maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm for harassing a women after she broke off their relationship, in behavior ranging from silent telephone calls, offensive notes, taking photographs of her and her family, and being frequently at her house and place of work. The House of Lords held that silent telephone calls can amount to an assault as long as the victim is made by them to fear some physical harm.

The appellant appealed his conviction on the count of rape for allegedly having sexual intercourse with the complainant without her consent when she was too drunk to put up any physical resistance. The Court upheld the conviction and the sentence on the grounds that the complainant's evidence was sufficient for a jury to find that the appellant was reckless as to the question of the complainant's consent, even if he did not know at the time that she was not consenting.

Mr. Azadani, the appellant, was under an injunction not to go within 250 yards of a specified address, after he had repeatedly sought a close and intimate relationship with Ms. Burris, which she refused, leading to repeated telephone calls and threats. Ms. Burris sought and obtained an interlocutory injunction prohibiting Mr. Azadani from pestering or contacting Ms. Burris, her children or her friends, or of going within 250 yards of her house. He breached the injunction and was committed to prison; he appeals the injunction. The Court held that an order prohibiting the defendant from being in a defined area in which the plaintiff's home was situated was possible in support of an injunction forbidding tortious harassment.