Sample Case Study In Health And Social Care

The complainant was a 28-year-old woman who was suffering from a mental disorder, had an IQ less than 75 and had been abusing the use of alcohol. On the day of the offence, the complainant left a community mental health team resource centre, after being interviewed by a psychiatrist, in a distressed and agitated state. Upon leaving the centre, she met the defendant and told him about her current situation which he then offered to help. She followed him to his friend’s house where she was drugged and where the sexual activity had taken place. When she was in the bathroom, the defendant entered and requested oral sex, which she subsequently obeyed. There was apparent consent, however, the issue here was whether the consent was a valid one.

Ratio

The person involved must be able to comprehend the information and at the same time able to weigh the relevant information. With medical evidence, the complainant was already in an emotionally unstable condition, along with her learning disability, she would have not been able to consent the sexual activity. In addition, she added to her judgment that consent to sexual activities should be person and situation specific as nobody generally consents to sex. Next, s 30(1)(c) and 30(2) provided that the complainant would not be able to refuse the sexual touching due to her mental disorder. The wide scope of the Act has undoubtedly included her suffering from an ‘irrational fear’ which was considered to be a valid reason for her incapability to decide and consent. Besides of her inability to choose, similar sections of the Act provide that she would not be able to refuse the touching with her mental disorder that may lead to her incapability to communicate her choice to the defendant. Baroness Hale made it clear that the Act did not limit to be a physical inability to communicate, where it contrasted the decision of the Court of

In A Local Authority v H, H was in a comparable situation with the complainant in R v C, where she could physically communicate her choice, but she had difficulty weighing the information due to her mental impairment. Therefore, it was held that she lacked capacity to consent and exercise a choice to her sexual relations. There was something more about this case, H has a highly sexualised behavior where she had multiple partners and was engaged in many sexual activities. She has to be under 24-hour surveillance to prevent her from engaging in any further sexual relations. When the court held that her sexual consents were never valid, all her previous sexual engagements were categorised to be an abuse. Herring justifies that although the courts have been stressing about the significance for consent, but the current law and practice is failing to protect the vulnerable individuals, and also depriving the liberty of individuals and infringing their rights to sexual activities. The law should be taking into account the interests of vulnerable individuals, or they will be taken advantage of their lack of ability to interpret and respond to the situation if