Is Ignorance now a valid defence strategy?

I must admit, that the case link that passed me on twitter had my in all states of confusion and amazement. The issue is that an 18 year old Muslim boy had ‘consensual’ sexual intercourse with a 13 year old girl. (Something we tend to refer to as paedophilia). Judge Michael Stokes decided to give the boy a 2 year suspended sentence.

The article was on the UK Daily mail, and I decided to take another look, yet, not much luck. Most other papers haven’t touched it yet, or will not touch it at all. Even Sky News UK seems to remain silent on the matter.

Let’s take a first look with legal eyes.
This was not a situation involving consent!

The Crimes Act 1900 (Australia) States in Section 61HA (4)

A person does not consent to sexual intercourse:

(a) If the person does not have the capacity to consent to the sexual intercourse, including because of age or cognitive incapacity, or

So, because of age, we have negation of consent.
This could now falls under Section 61I, Sexual assault

Any person who has sexual intercourse with another person without the consent of the other person and who knows that the other person does not consent to the sexual intercourse is liable to imprisonment for 14 years.

However, the ‘AND’ is massively needed, this did not seem to be the case here.  So, there was NO sexual assault.
But, this situation is captured in Section 66C Sexual intercourse—child between 10 and 16

(1) Child between 10 and 14
Any person who has sexual intercourse with another person who is of or above the age of 10 years and under the age of 14 years is liable to imprisonment for 16 years.

So, he would get an additional 2 years in wonderful penitentiary Hilton. This would be an open shut case if we read the Crimes Act, however, in CTM v R [2008] HCA 25 where a suspended term of 18 months was delivered. There the facts were not the same. However, in this case the accused was under the honest believe and on reasonable grounds that the victim was over 16. (And not the age of 15 as she turned out to be). This scenario does not play the same way in the UK (Where they call this part the Sexual Offences act 2003).

There in Section 9 it states:

(i) B is under 16 and A does not reasonably believe that B is 16 or over, or

This is different. Yet, it should not matter as the accused knew the age, but did not know that the act was illegal. If we go by Section 9 (2) he would again be entitled to a government paid stay at Hilton Penitentiary for no longer than 14 years.

So is ignorance bliss?

This is only part one of the entire play. The second part is all about the following sentence : ”Earlier the court heard how Rashid had ‘little experience of women’ due to his education at an Islamic school in the UK, which cannot be named for legal reasons.”

If we look at The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (SDA) which makes it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sex or marital status, and applies equally to women and men. Then we get two issues. One, the accused was guilty of discrimination (we will for now ignore the fact that he was genuinely not aware of this). The actual issue is that these values are allegedly propagated by this Islamic School. This is only one side, and we should await the official response of the school. However, the verdict has already been passed in the case of Mr Rashid.

So, is there another issue to prosecute? If the school was indeed guilty of this, then even though the accused should be convicted with more than a suspended sentence, it does give weight to this verdict where he only got a suspended sentence, and the school themselves should ALSO be held accountable for the transgressed events and as such another look should be taken in regards to Muslim school in the UK (actually, pretty much everywhere in the commonwealth). This is not me speaking against Muslim religion. We should all be aware that Christianity has had its own demons when it came to assigning equal values to women. There is however an issue with the fact that we embrace (or seem to embrace) equality. It seems from the information that the Muslim School does not seem to do that, and as such, it should be considered that these schools would have no business in any non-Muslim nation.

The end result is that a Muslim abuser who ‘didn’t know’ that sex with a girl of 13 was illegal is spared jail.

His honour ruled that putting this man into jail would do more bad then good. It is a hard call, especially as many want to side against a Muslim. Yet, he seems to have acted within his Muslim morals. I find it hard to convict him. I have fewer issues with a hard lash at this Muslim school, for the simple reason that this is managed by adults. THEY know (or should know) the law in the UK, especially in regards to matters of discrimination. To voice against the value of women should not be allowed anywhere within in the Commonwealth.