Clause 13 - Causing a child to watch a sexual act
Sexual Offences Bill [Lords]
3:45 pm
Mr Paul Goggins (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Wythenshawe and Sale East, Labour)
Some of the amendments will have a particular resonance for those Committee members who attended the presentation by the Metropolitan police yesterday. Amendments Nos. 45, 51, 59, 69 and 85 will ensure that any individual who shows a child or a person with a mental disorder or learning disability a cartoon, drawing or any other image of a person, whether real or imaginary, engaging in a sexual act is
committing an offence. That extends the offence in clause 13, causing a child to watch a sexual act, which previously only included causing a child to look at sexual activity depicted in photographs or pseudo-photographs. The amendments were tabled in response to concerns raised by the police that paedophiles often show media other than photographs depicting sexual activity to children for their own sexual gratification. For example, they might show tracings of such photographs, cartoons or other kinds of drawings.
The other amendments make similar changes to the offences corresponding to the behaviour described in clause 13, namely those offences in clauses 21, 35, 39 and 43 concerning abuse of trust and the protection of adults with mental disorders. Amendment No. 47 ensures that the marriage defence in clause 16—again, I emphasise that we will debate that at greater length later—uses the same term as the offences in clauses 10 to 14, to which it applies. Amendment No. 102 provides the definition of ''image'' on which the amendments rely. It includes moving or still images, however produced, and three-dimensional images. In the context of those offences, it will also cover images of imaginary people engaging in sexual activity, such as images created by computer graphics and cartoons.
Amendment No. 92 makes a minor consequential drafting amendment to the interpretation clause, clause 53, relating to child prostitution and pornography. Amendment No. 100 makes a minor consequential drafting amendment to clause 70, relating to the voyeurism offence under clause 69. Those amendments will assist the police in dealing with offenders who show such material, particularly to children, for their own sexual pleasure. Such behaviour may lead to a reduction of a child's natural barriers against engaging in sexual activity and forms a well recognised part of the process of grooming a child for abuse. We believe it right to extend that protection to vulnerable adults who may also be subject to abuse of that kind.