R v Williams

Facts

The defendant was a singing teacher. He had sexual intercourse with a pupil aged sixteen after telling her that he was performing an operation on her which would improve her breathing and her voice. She did not understand that intercourse was taking place and submitted believing that it was a medical procedure.

History

He was convicted of rape at trial, and appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal.

Issue

Whether consent obtained by a deception about what is being done to the complainant is consent for the purpose of rape, or whether the deception must be confined to the identity of the person.

Held

Appeal dismissed and the conviction for rape upheld. The complainant had consented to a surgical operation, not to sexual intercourse, so there was no consent to the act that took place.

Ratio

• Where a complainant is deceived as to the nature of the act, so that she consents to something different in kind from what is done, there is no true consent, and intercourse in those circumstances is rape; fraud as to some collateral matter would not have the same effect.

The judgments

Key reasoning

• The earlier decisions of R v Flattery (1877) 2 QBD 410 and R v Clarence (1888) 22 QBD 23 distinguish between fraud about the nature of the act and fraud about collateral matters, and the present case falls on the first side of that line.
• The complainant understood herself to be undergoing a medical procedure designed to help her voice and gave no consent to sexual intercourse, so she was not consenting to the act as it actually was.
• The defendant exploited her ignorance of what was in truth being done, which is the kind of deception that makes a submission different from consent.

Where it fits in the module

Topic 4 on sexual offences centres on the meaning of consent and the effect of deception on it. The case marks the traditional common-law position, in which only a deception going to the nature of the act, or later its purpose, negated consent. That is now governed by ss 74 to 76 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and the cases that follow, including R (Assange) v Swedish Judicial Authority [2011] EWHC 2849 (Admin) and McNally [2013] EWCA Crim 1051, ask whether the deception relates closely enough to the sexual act.

Criticisms

• The line between the nature of the act and collateral matters is hard to draw and makes liability depend on what the complainant misunderstood rather than on whether her sexual autonomy was respected.
• Focusing on what the complainant understood about the physical act leaves many serious deceptions, such as lies about identity, status or health, outside the offence, even though they may also undermine a free choice.
• The reasoning uses consent as a descriptive question of what the complainant believed, leaving no room for an account of the freedom and capacity to choose, which is how consent is now defined.