To think cheating/lying does not remove consent

As someone whose husband was supposed to be in charge of contraception and didn’t, resulting in a pregnancy I didn’t plan or ask for, I do see this as a bit different to what happened to me. I didn’t consent to pregnancy full stop and feel violated to this day.

This woman did want a baby but I can see where the feeling of betrayal and being deprived of agency around the circumstances can feel like they deserve some retribution. When does deception cross the line into criminal behaviour? It’s not rape per se but in the same family of sexual crime
imo.

i think its insulting to someone who was raped for her to suggest she was. She was cheated on, not nice, but certainly not rape.

I think criminalising infidelity would be awful. It’s a moral choice, not one to criminalise

so “it’s not likely someone would knowingly choose this” isn’t going to stand up to the burden.

Where was this written?

Anyway, I agree. Of course proof must be met in any case, whether onerous or not. It's how the legal system works.

jeremy Kyle and Maury Povich weren’t on tv that long ago to be fair, it definitely still happens

Well it seems that Liverpool John Moores university has done some research which concludes that up to one 25 men are unknowingly raising childre that aren't there own

Do you mean try and pass off a child as another man’s?
That’s virtually impossible these days I would imagine.
Have you known such cases?

And what about the women who knowingly falsify the paternity of their child? Should they be prosecuted as well?

Laws around marriage and bigamy I suppose were the ones that may traditionally protect from this sort of thing. They don’t prevent infidelity of course or stop someone lying. But if there is a legal commitment and a better knowledge of each others’ own lives and families before children then perhaps it’s less easy done in terms of having multiple families.

I don’t think what’s happened is rape but I do think it’s abusive and needs a category of its own.

The burden of proof for demonstrating unequivocally that somebody didn’t know their sexual partner was married and that they wouldn’t have had sex with them if they had known would be onerously high. Some people do knowingly have relationships with married people, sometimes they even choose to conceive and continue pregnancies within affairs, so “it’s not likely someone would knowingly choose this” isn’t going to stand up to the burden.

Surely a man who this has happened to ca report to the police under sex by deception laws and let them judged whether it has potential to proceed to prosecution?

you can do this already, suspect we don’t hear about it as they don’t

Well "dumped" is the equivalent of sacked in this context, isn't it? Consequences aren't always legal ones.

This overlaps with my legal speciality, which specifically excludes personal scenarios from its regulation. Because it would be utterly to impossible to legislate for the responsibilities we have to each other.

And I wouldn't want it to be tried. Look at the thread on offering a tissue as an act of offence - could you come up with a set of rules that allowed for those feelings? I wouldn't like to try.

Agree.
Rape is already notoriously difficult to prosecute. Criminalising morally questionable behaviour will not help those women who did not give consent in the moment to achieve justice.

Will this include women who lie to men that they are on contraception to fool a man into fatherhood ?

It should.

I think this too.

There are probably millions of women who’ve slept with a man believing him to be something he wasn’t - lying about their job for example.

Am i missing something? She wants infidelity criminalised. Why do we need to introduce new words?

Will this include women who lie to men that they are on contraception to fool a man into fatherhood ?
I think rather than trying to bring legal action, this woman should probably have got to know this man better. She obviously wanted motherhood so thats what she got 😏

IMO, the serious offence is not about cheating or lying or being a jerk. She now has to either keep the baby or terminate the pregnancy. These are two stressful processes her body and mind would have to go through. None of which she likely would have gone through had she known he had a whole other family.

Having someone get pregnant under the guise of being in a committed relationship and starting a family should be considered a serious offence.

I am off the opinion that the cheating in the lying is breach of contract and it angered me greatly that we brought in no fault because there is usually somebody at fault.
If the contract is legally binding and requires a court to dissolve it, then there needs to be breach of contract terms that can also be enforced.
I think it’s hard enough to get a rape conviction anyway without muddying the waters any further but this definitely is a criminal offence. Misrepresentation fraud call it what you will.

It already is an offence, it can be prosecuted as an Offence Against the Person if you knowingly have an STI, conceal that from a sexual partner, and pass it on to them. But there’s no legal basis for “putting somebody at risk” by having sex with them when you might potentially have had an STI because you also had other sexual partners, but don’t actually have an STI and haven’t passed one on, as no harm has been caused.

Anyone can claim anything. Proving it is what determines if it's true or not. Getting bodily fluid out of anyone (man or woman) by deception should be an offence.

I agree with you, going down this road of expanding what constitutes as rape will undermine actual rape. You can't compare being cheated on with being raped. Sex offences are currently (and rightly so) seen as abhorrent and there is a huge amount of shame in being a sex offender which will deter some from committing the offence. Although cheating is also frowned upon and immoral, it is nothing compared to sex offences. If we start jumping cheaters in the same box, sex offences may not be seen as badly as they are now.

Surely she (and GLP) are blurring ‘sex by deception’ with rape? Two different things. I would argue that the guy has done the first - as she consent to sex (and trying to conceive) on the basis of an understanding that he was single. You can lie by omission and it would be reasonable to assume that if someone wants to have a baby with you that they are single. However, without all the facts (and I can’t necessarily be bothered to deep dive the circumstances) unless they were living together/renting/co-home owning, I am not sure why any woman would start TTC with a man without those obvious and tangible signs of commitment that would, in turn, evidence that he was not involved elsewhere. Not victim blaming, but in law there is a principle of taking reasonable steps to protect ourselves or, at least, not contributing to the harm er suffer isn’t there?

An Israeli Arab was convicted of “rape by deception” in 2010 because the woman concerned said she would not have slept with him had she known he was not Jewish. He maintained he’d never pretended he was.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10717186

I’m also thinking of the undercover policemen who had sexual relationships with women while undercover. What they did was terrible but is it rape? To what extent is consenting to sex at your own risk?