Literature Review on Provision of Appropriate and Accessible ...

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The difficulty in designing legislation that would provide for a balance
between the need to protect vulnerable individuals from exploitation and
the need to respect an individual’s autonomy and capacity to engage in
voluntary and <strong>Literature</strong> freely chosen <strong>Review</strong> relationships Provision of has Appropriate been recognised and Accessible (LRC,
2005). The literature Support to examines People with various an Intellectual standards Disability for determining
who are
capacity to consent Experiencing to sexual Crisis relations Pregnancyranging from a lower standard
of understanding the sex act to a higher standard of understanding the
sexual act and its consequences, such as pregnancy. However, there is
no consensus in the literature on what level of understanding is required
for a person to be able to consent to sexual relationships.
6.7 International good practice in assessing and promoting informed
consent to sexual relations
Elements of good practice from other jurisdictions need to be explored in
order to understand what informed consent to sexual relations involves.
• McCarthy and Thompson (2004) proposed that the conditions
which should exist for free choice include the following:
- For valid consent to sex, women with learning disabilities
must know that sex, especially when initiated by a more
powerful person, is not required and compulsory.
- People must have sufficient communication skills to be able
to make their choice (to engage in sexual activity or not)
known to the other party. This means that either verbally
or through an alternative communication system known to
both parties, to give/deny/withdraw consent at any stage
in the activity. Silence or non-communication must not be
interpreted as consent.
- There needs to be a reasonable degree of equality between
the parties, so that both parties have sufficient power to
make the choice to engage or not engage in sex, without
fear of adverse consequences.
• The Sexual Offences Act 2003 in England and Wales defines
capacity to consent in terms of ability to refuse and adopts a
functional approach where an individual needs to understand the
nature and consequences of the act and be able to communicate
her/his choice.