Street harassment to be made a crime
Discussion
Lucas CAV said:
Speak to any teenage girl in your family about it. It's still massively common sadly. My son's gf gets regular comments etc shouted at her (including when she is walking home from school in her uniform)
My wife and I were at the pub last Friday with our niece who is 26 but looks a good bit younger. Despite the fact she was sitting at a table with a middle aged couple a drunk alleged Porche salesman twice her age felt OK joining our table and tell her she was gorgeous. Several times. I was caught in the middle between telling him to butt out and getting signalled from my wife not to create a scene. She regularly gets these sort of comments and asked where she is from as she is not white and does not have a local accent.
Of course there is a line between chat in a pub where interaction between strangers is part of the thing and where it crosses a line when it is obvious one party isn't interested.
She is from London and never got this kind of s
t down there. Must be the open welcoming Scotland the SNP bang on about. In fairness she has only been called a "
" (she isn't of Asian descent) a couple of times when on her own and other members of the public have rapidly stepped in and told the ahole concerned to fk off.Carl_Manchester said:
A decent chunk of it is down to drunk/sniffed up knuckledragger tradesmen throwing a barb or two out of the window on a Thursday/Friday afternoon.
You can't legislate against stupidity but something is better than nothing in this instance.
Oh, please. Really? Inappropriate comments and behaviour come from all areas of society, in fact its sometime worse from the 'privileged'. You can't legislate against stupidity but something is better than nothing in this instance.
People think I'm insane because I am frowning all the time.
Certainly have been frowning really hard reading this thread. I cannot believe we didn't previously have a law to cover this.
I would like to thank the happy clapping new puritans for their ceaseless effort in scouring the news for such important issues and then getting very cross discussing the issue whilst all agreeing with one another.
Certainly have been frowning really hard reading this thread. I cannot believe we didn't previously have a law to cover this.
I would like to thank the happy clapping new puritans for their ceaseless effort in scouring the news for such important issues and then getting very cross discussing the issue whilst all agreeing with one another.
eccles said:
I think it will still be quite hard to prosecute someone though. How do you prove someone wolf whistled at you? At what point does staring cross the line, and then what if they say no I wasn't staring?
I don’t. I think it will be extremely easy.Pee sitting down = innocent of course.
Pee standing up = spawn of the devil / always guilty.
I suspect that this new legislation will get abused almost instantly. It would be nice to see where the burden of proof lies. Is a mere accusation enough for conviction?
The answer to the question 'what's the point when most of this behaviour is already potentially criminal' seems to be to raise victim's awareness and encourage them to report incidents.
At least that is the public justification- the other related one is to get it into the heads of more police officers that following girls around, shouting at them and all the rest of it is not trivial, that girls/women can be seriously frightened by this sort of thing. And that perpetrators need stamping on.
As a previous poster has said, anyone with a teenage daughter will have heard stories of awful behaviors. My own daughter on her route to the local shops had to pass over a railway bridge where the same man was often hanging about making unpleasant remarks to passing women. Then on one occasion he exposed himself to her.
She went to the police to report it; their attitude was 'its just what you have to expect' 'you could go another way' with an undercurrent of it somehow being her fault. Which would be ridiculous regardless of style of dress, but even from a copper who presumably believed that wearing a short skirt made a girl fair game, it seemed an odd response to a girl who would have been wearing trousers and a sweatshirt.
And she didn't tell me at the time, as she didn't want me to be upset or make a fuss.
This would have been around 8 years ago, so hopefully things are starting to improve.
At least that is the public justification- the other related one is to get it into the heads of more police officers that following girls around, shouting at them and all the rest of it is not trivial, that girls/women can be seriously frightened by this sort of thing. And that perpetrators need stamping on.
As a previous poster has said, anyone with a teenage daughter will have heard stories of awful behaviors. My own daughter on her route to the local shops had to pass over a railway bridge where the same man was often hanging about making unpleasant remarks to passing women. Then on one occasion he exposed himself to her.
She went to the police to report it; their attitude was 'its just what you have to expect' 'you could go another way' with an undercurrent of it somehow being her fault. Which would be ridiculous regardless of style of dress, but even from a copper who presumably believed that wearing a short skirt made a girl fair game, it seemed an odd response to a girl who would have been wearing trousers and a sweatshirt.
And she didn't tell me at the time, as she didn't want me to be upset or make a fuss.
This would have been around 8 years ago, so hopefully things are starting to improve.
Terminator X said:
By the police, presumably. In Scotland conduct like that would have been covered by a breach of the peace charge. Behaviour outwith what is normal and acceptable which causes alarm.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/178917/resp...
irc said:
Terminator X said:
By the police, presumably. In Scotland conduct like that would have been covered by a breach of the peace charge. Behaviour outwith what is normal and acceptable which causes alarm.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/178917/resp...
TX.
Terminator X said:
It can't be inforced well unless we all start walking around with body cams that is. To be honest I can't say that won't ever happen it probably will. The problem with all this is the difference with a creep and admirer is how attractive they are to the person they are doing it to.
bhstewie said:
hstewie said:Terminator X said:
Obstructing someone's path? Good luck with that.
TX.
I thought the idea of legislation like this is more so that the Police have tools to deal with the "I wasn't harassing her Officer I was just walking directly in front of her minding my own business" creeps.TX.
My view is that the new legislation exists to simply shut all the excuses and loopholes that might be used by a creep.
It clearly isn’t going to be used against a person who isn’t a creep, but is innocently walking too close to someone for a couple of hundred yards.
It will be used against people the Police know are up to no good, but will just be more tools in the toolbox for them to use against a creep.
I’ve posted about this before, but years before we were married, and in the early stages of dating, my wife was subject to harassment by a bloke she worked with. He would try and give her flowers, and would wait for her outside of work and insist on walking down the road with her to try to talk to her. He would, as per the legislation, block her path with the whole “come on, just stop and talk to me for two minutes”. One day he stood in front of her car to stop her driving away, in an attempt to talk to her yet again.
The police got involved but there was very little they could do. “He hasn’t actually broke the law” etc etc. they had words with him, and it did nothing. Eventually he was stopped as his employers told him straight up they would sack him immediately if he ever went near her again.
I can clearly see that this legislation would have given the police tools to arrest the bloke who harassed my wife.
The vast majority of girls/women simply want left alone to go about their day.
Terminator X said:
The bill doesn't actually mention any of those that I can see, it's just somebody's interpretation of actions they think (or hope?!) would be. Here's the relevant text (from "Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill"):
The text of 4A it refers to is:
"Intentional harassment, alarm or distress.
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress, he—
(a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
(b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress."
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