Lord Chancellor disputes decision.

Press, 13 January 1982, Page 8

Lord Chancellor disputes decision.

NZPA staff correspondent London Britian’s Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, says the “imprudence” of a rape victim should not allow the rapist to get a reduced sentence, unless .there has been actual sexual provocation.

He made his view known in a letter to a Labour member of Parliament, Jack Ashley after an outcry when a judge fined a businessman £ 2000 (about $4600) for raping a 17-year-old hitchhiker.

Mr Ashley had called on Lord Hailsham to intervene in the row.

Judge Bertrand Richards, a 68-year-old father of four daughters, had fined John Allen, aged 33, instead of sending him to jail because the judge said the girl “was guilty of a great deal of contributory negligence.”

The court was told she had accepted a lift home in Alien’s Jaguar because there was no public transport from the Air Force base where she had been visiting her American serviceman fiance. Lord Hailsham said in his letter to Mr Ashley: “Contributory negligence does not, of course, constitute any defence to rape, nor in my view, in the absence of actual sexual provocation, should imprudence on the part of a victim operate as a factor of mitigation in reduction of sentence.

"I do not of course suggest either factor was present in the actual case, and no sug-

gestion of direct provocation is in fact made.” . Lord Hailsham told Mr Ashley he would deal with the matter “most carefully and in my own way, with due regard both to the seriousness of the detestable action of rape and to the limitations on the constitutional position of the Lord Chancellor.”

Mr Ashley said Lord Hailsham’s comments were a clear dissociation by the Lord Chancellor, the highest judicial officer in Britian, from Judge Richards’ action and would reassure “the very many men and women who have been greatly disturbed by recent events.”

Lord Hailsham has called for transcripts of the case and asked Judge Richards for an explanation of his comments about “contributory negligence.” There is no provision in Britain for the prosecution to appeal against what it considers to be inadequate sentences, but a judge has power to revise his sentence within 28 days.

Lord Hailsham was himself under attack five years ago for comments he made during a rape case appeal. Protests at the judgment he and two other judges gave resulted in the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, setting up a committee on rape law.

Lord Hailsham said at that time that he believed it was permissible in law to acquit a man of rape, if the accused believed the woman he was raping was consenting.