An experienced Scottish criminal law defence counsel, Tony Lenehan KC, said that around sixty percent rape cases included sexual strangulation. He said that “as many as three fifths of serious sex-crime indictments he sees feature allegations of non-consensual strangulation. The KC, who is vice-dean of the Faculty of Advocates, also pointed to a rise in spitting claims as evidence that younger suspects may have been influenced by internet porn culture.” This was reported in The Sunday Times (Scotland).
“There has been a striking increase in rape charges which include choking, said by the accused to be consensual, over the last five to ten years,” Lenehan said. “I have also observed an increase in allegations involving spitting, but perhaps less so than choking. I’d say of the indictments I see, perhaps as many as three fifths will include allegations of choking during sexual activity. Spitting appears in one fifth or more.”
Politicians have become so concerned about the prevalence of non-fatal strangulation that Michelle Thomson, a Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Scottish National Party, has suggested a standalone law may be needed to outlaw the practice, sometimes referred to as “breath play”. She received backing from Conservative and Labour colleagues. Last week John Swinney, the first minister, said legislation deserves “serious consideration”. England and a number of other jurisdictions have specific laws against choking.
“Officials at the Crown Office confirmed that they add throttling allegations to rape indictments to reflect the gravity of the life-threatening behaviour.”
(See our earlier blog on “breath play”).
The impact of pornography on young adults
“Lenehan has no views on legal reforms but warned throttling and spitting allegations were most frequently aimed at younger accused and that more debate was needed about why this was happening.
“I think these aspects tend to appear in cases of men in their teens, twenties and thirties,” he said. “They appear more densely in the younger half of that age spread. It looks like an emerging problem, rather than one that is receding. Choking purely as a form of violent attack [strangling] was occasionally present from my early years in court and likely long before, but the change struck me certainly by five years ago.”
Lenehan added: “The frequency increased and choking was commonly asserted to be part of a consensual activity, rather than simply a violent attack [strangling versus sexual choking]. The same for spitting. I suspect empirical research may find that sexual choking and spitting are two sides of the same increasingly common coinage.”
Lenehan suggested that these behaviours might have become normalised for some young men. However, juries were not buying that they were consensual.
He said: “I’m conscious that I’m a lawyer and not a social commentator, but for what it is worth, the observed generational correlation strengthens my suspicion that this is a consequence of exposure to a promotion of misogyny in ‘laddish’ internet content.
“I’m in my mid-fifties, and so I emerged into adulthood long before the internet. I’d be surprised if modern internet immersion wasn’t an important factor in promoting this misogynistic behaviour inwards from the margins. I don’t think it is yet widespread, because I have the barometer of jury verdicts to go on. Juries are not generally receptive of the assertion that choking and spitting accompany genuinely consensual sexual behaviour.”
“Why is this happening?”
Mr Lenehan rightly states that we need to debate “why is this happening” as it disproportionately affects young adult males. Perhaps The Reward Foundation can help shed some light on this. It is vital that the criminal justice authorities recognise the research on internet pornography use. The research points to the brain changes that take place over time. As the user’s brain becomes desensitised to a certain level of stimulation, it needs something more shocking, more painful, just to become aroused. Escalation happens in terms of the type of porn watched and the amount of time spent watching it. It is a serious health issue. It is similar to drugs. For instance, over time a user of heroin or marijuana for needs stronger stimulation to get high. All these drugs and behaviours work on the same part of the brain, the reward system of the brain.
We have found over the 12 years of our involvement in this field that the best way to tackle this is to teach young men about the impact of free, all-you-can-get-porn is having on their brain, development and behaviour. In particular they don’t seem to care in the first instance about violence against women. They only care about their own sexual performance. When they discover how porn can make them impotent, they are more willing to listen. This is a huge issue among young men today. The effect of quitting porn, which is not an easy challenge, is that their attitude and behaviour towards young women improves dramatically once their brain has resensitised to natural forms of stimulation.
Porn companies focus on women users
Pornhub, probably the best known porn site, has indicated in reports that the market for men is largely saturated. Today they are pursuing women to build their user base and thus increase their multibillion dollar profits from ad impressions. The companies are not so much after users’ money directly as their eyeballs on screens. Of course companies do make huge profits from niche materials and premium pay-per-view sites.
This pursuit of women users means that women are becoming sexually desensitised too and not gaining satisfaction from traditional sex. They want more risky sex. This can heighten the sexual high because their brains have become desensitised as a result of porn. The trouble is the risks they run are rarely if ever spelled out. Consenting to do something “adventurous” does not usually come with the information about brain injury or risk of stroke, nor in some cases, death. It’s hard to withdraw consent too when you have passed out after only 4 seconds of being choked.
More legislation and better education are a must if we want functioning, loving future generations of young people turned on by real people and not violent, manufactured porn.
