Defence Lawyers using defence of ASD for offenders that commit serious crime.

I agree. The knowledge that a defendant is autistic may be relevant to the case and may be something that should be made known to the jury, but it is not something that the general public needs to know as it ends up reinforcing negative stereotypes, especially when they make the statement in isolation without any clarifying data, such as why it is relevant to the case

I too agree, most of us know the difference between right and wrong, the only thing I can think of where ASC could be part of a defence is if as part of that same defence, the defendant say's they've been groomed by others.

Its the fact the media say it straight away like they did with the Stockport incident, male was caught and charged amd immediately it was reported he was ASD.

That is what annoys me, here in Scotland, a guy who was found guilty of voyeurism over a 10 year period had the defence of autism, sorry, no, he is a sexual predator regardless if he is autistic or not

Its the fact the media say it straight away like they did with the Stockport incident, male was caught and charged amd immediately it was reported he was ASD.

That is what annoys me, here in Scotland, a guy who was found guilty of voyeurism over a 10 year period had the defence of autism, sorry, no, he is a sexual predator regardless if he is autistic or not

TheCatWoman said:

Given that the rates of prosecution, let alone conviction of any sexual offence is so low in this country and police so unwilling to take any notice of sexual offences in general, I doubt that the sort of case you're describing would make it to court. The CPS have to take publc interrest into account before taking a case to court, I doubt if this sort of case would meet the already high bar.

But the example I gave was real. I pulled it off a lawyer’s website. See the thing is the reason most sex crimes don't get prosecuted is lack of evidence of the fact. Either you can't prove the sexual activity happened or you can't prove there wasn't consent. When the autistic person realises, they were mistaken about consent after the fact (usually because someone says stop) they will admit this. And as far as the police are concerned that's a confession. The police tend to forget it's not enough to prove there wasn't consent you must prove the other party knew that (or reasonably should have known that).

So the 2 big hurdles the prosecution have, proving the act and proving the lack of consent, are cleared by the defendants own testimony. They see it as a slam dunk open and shut case and forget about the 3rd hurdle of proving a lack of belief in consent. ... because they tend to assume that's obvious when in fact it definitely isn't.

Also they tend to assume if autism is raised as a defence it will be as a form of insanity defence and government guidelines specifically tell them to prosecute even if they think there is an insanity defence. However as previously mentioned the autism is usually more relevant to the mens rea (mental component) of the crime which is different.

As I said earlier the young man had a whole range of learning disabilities and I used this as an example of the complexities.

Given that the rates of prosecution, let alone conviction of any sexual offence is so low in this country and police so unwilling to take any notice of sexual offences in general, I doubt that the sort of case you're describing would make it to court. The CPS have to take publc interrest into account before taking a case to court, I doubt if this sort of case would meet the already high bar. But I do take your point, that if such a case did come to court a defence lawyer would be duty bound to ask that his clients ASC and any other learning difficulty be taken into account.

With the general paranoia around people with mental health problems commiting violent crimes of course media are going to pick it up and run with it, they're in the business of selling content, sometimes, the good ones will ask how some one can be so failed by the services who are supposed to care for and treat them. The same things get said over and over again, lessons will be learned, but somehow they never are, its like our medical, educational and justice systems have a learning difficulty!

I think the situation you describe is more intellectual disability than autism though. The kind of case I'm thinking about might be a case I'm thinking of where a young man with Aspergers was having a chat with a woman on a bus. The chat gets a bit flirty, and he thinks 'ok she's really into me' she he puts his hand on her knee. She reacts angrily and he immediately removes his hand. But because we now live in the age of political correctness the police get involved. He's charged with sexual assault. And this poor man’s lawyer has to explain to a jury that sexual assault requires than his client not reasonably believe the other party consented, and when they decide what he reasonably believed they have to take his Aspergers and the difficulty it causes him navigating flirting into account.

I've had a look about and I can find no reference to such a case. That doesn't mean it didn't exist. It might have been in a lower court or under seal. The only thing similar I can find is the Hensman v Ministry Of Defence case. What was a discrimination trial. A guy with Aspergers had been caught filming a shower secretly at work and was sacked from his job. There was a discrimination claim. The nature of the equality act is such that even if a disabled person commits a crime at work you don't automatically get the right to sack them if their disability was involved in the crime.

But even here all the court said was, yes having Aspergers could potentially mean sacking him for recording people naked in the shower is discrimination. But this needs to go back to the tribunal so they can balance that against the need to maintain secrecy on a secret military base.

Also, even that verdict is really weird because The Equality Act 2010 (Disability) Regulations 2010 exclude voyeurism as a special case where the equality act doesn't apply.

I remember a collegue had a counselling client who had autism amoung many other learning difficulties and he couldn't get his head around consent, he couldn't understand that being friends with a woman didn't mean that they had to have sex with him. I think partly this was due to his limited understanding and cognitive functioning, he needed to have sex and relationships explained to him in the same terms as a child, but he had needs and desires and body of an adult man, a large adult man.

I think part of the problem with sex eduacation for people with disabiities, both mental and physical is that those who are supposed to help us infantalise us instead, they don't really want to explain things, they're embarassed. When everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator and so many of the peole who work with disabled people are poorly trained how can they be expected to cope with explaining to someone with the understanding of an eight year old in an adult body the complexities of negotitating sex and relationships? I suspect its worse now and that far to many people are getting their sex and relationship education from social media and the likes of Andrew Tate.

Of course sexual predators are notoriously manipulative and I wonder how easy it is to convince people that you don't understand, when you do and just don't care? The criminal justice system is overwhelmed, especially with rape and sexual abuse cases and what do you do with those convicted, if they're convicted and given any meaningful sentance?