Changing the Sexual Offences Act could do more harm than good for victims, ConCourt told

The Centre for Applied Legal Studies has made submissions in the Constitutional Court on Thursday for the Sexual Offences Act not to be amended.

A constitutional challenge to have the act changed was launched by NPO, The Embrace Project, three years ago.

Last year, the NPO achieved a landmark ruling in the Pretoria High Court related to "believed consent" in sexual offence cases.

Senior counsel for the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane, told a panel of ConCourt judges that changing the Sexual Offences Act could do more harm than good for victims.

NPO, The Embrace Project, is arguing for rape accused suspects to prove that reasonable steps were taken to ascertain consent.

Mokgoroane told the court that crimes such as assault do not require the action of consent to be proven.

"It is self-evident that an attack occurs without consent. The same principle should apply to sexual offences. Removing consent as a definitional element would reframe these offences as acts of violence rather than sexual acts, thereby desexualising the crime and focusing on the accused's conduct."

Mokgoroane said that proving consent shifted the burden onto survivors, with a focus on the complainant’s behaviour, rather than that of the accused.