Post by acnedriver on Sept 6, 2022 6:00:59 GMT
A taxi driver who asked two women for sex in exchange for a lift has had his conviction overturned after the Appeal Court found his “alarming” behaviour was not a sexual offence.
Faisal Aziz’s guilty verdict for “sexual communication” was quashed because the incident lacked a “significant sexual aspect” and was substituted with a conviction for breach of the peace.
His name was also removed from the sex offenders register following the Sheriff Appeal Court decision.
The ruling, by a panel of two men and one woman, provoked incredulity among politicians and campaigners.
The women, aged 18 and 21, had been drinking in Edinburgh city centre in October 2019. When the driver pulled up, they asked if he could take them home but said they had no money. He said: “What else can you offer?” and when asked to explain, replied, “Sex.” The younger woman felt unsafe and uncomfortable, her friend was said to have been frightened.
Of the appeal Sheriff Alasdair MacFadyen said there was no dispute that the driver had made suggestions “a reasonable person might consider to have been sexual, or . . . made without the consent of the complainers”.
At issue, he said, was whether under the terms of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009 his purpose was “obtaining sexual gratification”, or “humiliating, distressing or alarming” the women. According to the panel, obtaining sexual gratification is “the satisfaction of a sexual urge by the making of the communication”.
“In our view, in order to justify a conviction under [the 2009 act] the sexual gratification must be intrinsically connected to the making of the communication.” MacFadyen added: “The making of the remark did not invade the sexual autonomy of either of the complainers.”
The limited nature of the exchange also undermined the claim Aziz had sought to humiliate the complainers.
Laura Tomson, co-director of Zero Tolerance, said: “The ruling that this incident ‘was not for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification or distressing or alarming the complainers’ is utterly bizarre. Asking women for sex in exchange for a taxi ride is absolutely a form of violence against women and not acceptable.”
Russell Findlay, the Scottish Conservative shadow community safety minister and MSP for West Scotland, said: “Non-lawyers may struggle to understand how a sleazy taxi driver seeking sex from two young women in lieu of a fare does not constitute behaviour of a ‘significant sexual aspect’.
“The unfortunate victims caught up in this technical legal debate can hopefully take some comfort that this trio of sheriffs at least consider the driver’s behaviour to be ‘alarming’."
SOURCE THE TIMES