Ha ha! Sorry, yes, don't want to give further attention to the rag. However, the piece is basically an 'debate' re a man who has been prosecuted for assaulting a woman who he had sex with.
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RightMinds
As one man gets an assault conviction after his lover complained about rough sex, JAN MOIR asks... What next? Jail for men who are a let down in bed!
By Jan Moir for the Daily Mail
00:37 26 Jun 2015, updated 11:16 26 Jun 2015
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Samuel Price and Elizabeth Sandlin weren’t exactly a couple. Not in the traditional sense. They were a pair of attractive twentysomethings who, over the course of a year, met up now and again just to have sex with each other.
No strings attached, unless a bit of light bondage was on the cards.
This kind of sex connection is not uncommon and is known as ‘friends with benefits’ in polite society.
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Samuel Price
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Elizabeth Sandlin
In this modern age, a purely physical and non-emotional relationship like this is supposed to be a sophisticated answer to servicing basic needs.
Yet after a night together went wrong on Valentine’s Day last year, the failings in the practice defeated the advantages of the theory.
Price, 24, has been landed with a criminal conviction for assault after Sandlin, 20, complained to police about the roughness of the sex they had together.
On the night in question, they met up late in the evening after both had been drinking at separate functions: he at a wedding, she at a nightclub.
During sex in his bedroom at his family’s luxury farmhouse outside Chester, Price had pulled Sandlin’s hair and bit her on the thigh and bottom, leaving bruises.
In his court defence, he said that rough and playful sex had always been part of their relationship.
He has apologised and was horrified when he saw photographs of her two bruises — but Sandlin was not to be placated.
‘I trusted someone I should not have trusted. He was very drunk, blind drunk. He completely overstepped the mark. I was shocked,’ she said.
Today, however, the one who is truly shocked is Samuel Price, who cannot believe he now has a conviction.
And, to be honest, neither can I.
Yet this case is part of a growing trend, just another unhappy statistic in a week when it was revealed that convictions for violence against women have reached a record high.
Domestic abuse cases account for 14 per cent of all prosecutions going through the courts.
Nearly 100,000 criminal cases were launched against abusive partners last year, with a record 68,601 successful convictions.
Of course, much of this is to be hugely welcomed. A broadening of the definition of domestic abuse to include offences such as revenge porn and coercive control is a step in the right direction.
Record numbers of men being prosecuted for violent crimes against women, including rape and so-called honour-based violence, can only be viewed as a positive step.
Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, has urged police and prosecutors to take crimes against women more seriously, while changes in the law have made it easier to prosecute men for domestic abuse.
New guidelines encourage the system to be more open-minded and consider that victims of domestic abuse are not just the stereotypical battered wife.
They are women, perhaps, like Elizabeth Sandlin. Aggrieved after a night out went wrong and not ashamed to push for her partner to be punished.
Domestic abuse was once a dirty secret, a shame that had to be borne in private by a battered wife or a violated girlfriend.
I’m glad those days have gone, but I worry that the mania for feminising the law — for whittling and shaping it to suit the concerns of noisy pressure groups — is resulting in skewing justice too far in the other direction.
In the Price/Sandlin case, if rough sex was an integral part of their relationship, then it must have been consensual.
Clearly on this particular night, matters went beyond what she expected or felt comfortable with, but he was in her words, ‘blind drunk’.
Perhaps she might have asked herself why she went to bed with someone who was so clearly out of control?
Price’s judgment was blurred — but so was hers. However, while she can use drink as an excuse, he cannot, because drunkenness can never be a defence for violence, even if it was unintended.
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Jan Moir says in the Price/Sandlin case, if rough sex was an integral part of their relationship, then it must have been consensual (pictured: Miss Sandlin's bruises)
Yet from the unpromising beginnings of an alcohol-fuelled tryst that went awry, Elizabeth Sandlin wasted no time in going on to try to criminalise her sex-pal and claim victim status for herself. My worry is that the DPP, while encouraging justice officials to look for victims in the unlikeliest places, is going to make it too easy for an aggrieved partner to take to the courts on a whim.
Meanwhile, pornography is readily available and books such as the Fifty Shades Of Grey quartet normalise sadistic sex to the extent that housewives hold S&M-themed tea parties, complete with whip-shaped eclairs.
All this is confusing for young men and women — but especially for men.
Elizabeth Sandlin may have received justice for her bruises, but should this case ever have been brought?
Sensible women don’t jump into bed with men for a sex assignation, then complain if they don’t behave like Prince Charming.
Sensible women would develop a trusting relationship with a man before taking it to a more intimate level. But sense and perspective never seem to have a place in the sex wars.
Where are we going from here? Perhaps women will start to bring criminal charges if they don’t get full sexual satisfaction on demand.
