What is consent?

The word ‘consent’ in the context of the offence of rape is now defined in the Sexual Offences Act 2003. A person consents if she or he agrees by choice, and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice. The essence of this definition is the agreement by choice. The law does not require the victim to have physically resisted in order to prove a lack of consent. The question of whether the victim consented is a matter for the jury to decide, although the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) considers this issue very carefully throughout the life of a case.

• Consent means giving your agreement or ‘saying yes’ to something, in this case sex. The law says that consent is something active. It means freely choosing to say ‘yes’
• If you don’t agree, then you don’t give your consent. If you are threatened, frightened, drugged, coerced or asleep then you can’t give your consent freely.