Voyeurism (Offences) (No. 2) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Mary Robinson and Kate Hollern

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Q Clause 2 of the Bill includes motives, such as obtaining sexual gratification and causing humiliation, alarm and distress. How difficult will it be for the police to secure a prosecution by establishing the motives?

Assistant Commissioner Hewitt: Establishing motive is always a challenge in any sort of crime. You will clearly have the digital evidence—that is, whatever photograph was taken. That will take you some way towards motive. Adding the element of alarm and distress is important, because the legislation should be very victim focused. Clearly, I would suggest, any person who realised or became aware that someone had taken a photograph in those circumstances would be distressed by it, so you would be able to use that.

Equally, one of the other factors we have to consider is that, often, these photographs find their way on to websites. There are websites where people will upload these kinds of photographs. Again, there is a further trail that takes you towards motivation on behalf of the person who has committed the offence.

We will always have to prove motivation, but the alarm and distress element is very strong. I suggest that, with the right kind of questioning, the right approach to interviewing and the digital evidence you would have, you would be in a reasonable place to assert the motivation.

[Mary Robinson]

Q When Gina Martin brought this to the police in the first place, she was able to get somebody on to it straight away, because there was a police officer there. The first thought was that it would be treated through the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 more generally, yet that did not come to anything. Is that because it was not previously covered or because it is difficult to prove a case? Are we going to have to guard against simply getting into another piece of legislation where it is difficult to prove the case again?

Assistant Commissioner Hewitt: I don’t think it is about difficulty. For me, that is the gap this legislation can potentially fill. The two pieces of legislation that you would most likely try to use as it currently stands are, first, outraging public decency legislation, which—let’s be honest—even with the language used in that you realise it is not necessarily fit for the time that we are now. In the first instance, that has to happen in a public place. It also requires witnesses to have been present at the time where the offence took place. An important point coming from my sexual offences lead is that it is not, per se, a sexual offence, and I think these should be treated as a sexual offence. We also have the voyeurism legislation, which has been used, but again, that requires a private setting and seeing and filming a private act.

I do not think the legislative framework as it stands is adequate for the issue that we have. It is another example where the advances and availability of technology—let’s be clear, I would guess that everyone at secondary school probably has a smartphone with them all of the time, which means they have a camera with them all of the time. This means they have the opportunity to commit an offence, amongst others. There are a number of what I believe are sexual offences that are image-based—the so-called sexting and the revenge porn as it is popularly called—all of these offences where the ability for people, universally, to take quality images quickly and potentially share those images takes us to a place where, at the moment, the legislative framework does not give us the ability to deal with that effectively. That is the gap. You always have to prove a crime and there will be always be occasions when that can be challenging. We can deal with it much more effectively with clauses that are specifically focussed on this type of offending.